commits
| 2023-07-22 | Restore compatibility with BSD editline and older GNU readline versions | Sören Tempel |
| 2023-07-22 | Don't sort completion matches alphabetically | Sören Tempel |
| 2021-05-01 | tests: update expected hist-size output | Sören Tempel |
| 2021-04-04 | README.md: Add status section | Sören Tempel |
| 2021-04-04 | Improve code for removing trailing getline(3) newlines | Sören Tempel |
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input
Prompt for input with readline-like key bindings.
Motivation
I needed a program to interactively read data from standard input in a
shell script, preferably with readline-like key bindings. Back then I
didn’t know about rlwrap and implemented this from
scratch by myself. Contrary to rlwrap, this implementation focuses on
shell scripting and not on providing a “readline wrapper” for existing
applications. As an additional difference, input initially used a fork
of the linenoise editing library. Since linenoise
wasn’t properly maintained, later version switched to BSD editline and
GNU readline. The last version, released with linenoise support, is
0.7.2.
Status
I use this as part of my IRC client on a daily basis. For this use case, it works entirely fine as is. However, further improvements could be made to generalize the completion setup.
Features
- Support for readline-like key bindings.
- Support for tab completions using arbitrary commands.
- Support for a persistent editing history.
Installation
The following software is required:
- A C99 compiler
- GNU make (sorry!)
- GNU readline (or BSD editline)
The program can be installed using:
$ make install
On BSD using editline instead of readline is possible by installing using:
$ gmake LDLIBS="-ledit -lncurses" install
Testing
A test suite using tmux is also available. The test suite relies on heuristics to determine whether the process under test is ready to receive input and might thus be a bit racy. It can be invoked using:
$ make check
License
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.