How do I use TAB instead of Enter for completion in ido-mode?

Question

When I do C-x C-f .emacs.d/i TAB Emacs displays a new buffer which presents "Possible completions", which are in my case auto-save-list/, history and init.el. I would like to have it complete to just .emacs.d/init.el.

I have the following inside init.el regarding ido:

(require 'ido)
(ido-mode 1)
(setq ido-enable-flex-matching t)

Answer 1

You can control this by setting the variable ido-enable-prefix to t:

(setq ido-enable-prefix t)

From the documentation:

Non-nil means only match if the entered text is a prefix of file name. This behavior is like the standard Emacs completion. If nil, match if the entered text is an arbitrary substring. Value can be toggled within Ido using ido-toggle-prefix.

The value of ido-enable-flex-matching does not interfere with this setting.

Of course, if .emacs.d/i is a prefix for more than one file, Emacs will still list possible completions.