Extension of hippie-expand. I created this program to let `hippie-expand' expand only unibyte chars and expand long symbols. M-x try-expand-dabbrev-limited-chars - expand dabbrev substring when input begins from `-' or `_'. - otherwise expand dabbrev - symbols expanded this command only contain 0-9a-zA-Z\?!_-, which is controlled to set `he-dabbrev-chars' M-x hippie-expand-file-name - complete file name at point Example: -ex [M-x hippie-expand-dabbrev-limited-chars] -> hippie-expand ; Installation: Put hippie-exp-ext.el to your load-path. The load-path is usually ~/elisp/. It's set in your ~/.emacs like this: (add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "~/elisp")) And the following to your ~/.emacs startup file. (require 'hippie-exp-ext) (global-set-key (kbd "C-@") 'hippie-expand-dabbrev-limited-chars) (global-set-key (kbd "M-/") 'hippie-expand-file-name) No need more.