CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellcygwinreadline
DSec
DSec

Reputation: 109

Rlwrap doesn't seem to cooperate with "read -e"

A new twist to somewhat common question:

In my interactive script I pre-fill the user input like so:

#process_line.sh

INPUT=$1 # previous value
read -e -p "> " -i "$INPUT" INPUT

To implement command history I call process_line.sh 

    rlwrap ./process_line.sh $INPUT

Now here's the twist: if I have the "read -e" option, I can edit the pre-filled input BUT there is no command history, and adversely, I can have command history, courtesy of rlwrap , without the "read -e" option, but no pre-filling (that is, "read -i" doesn't really do anything).

The question, of course, is whether I can have both input pre-fill and editing AND command history at the same time.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 937

Answers (2)

Hans Lub
Hans Lub

Reputation: 5678

This use case has been in the rlwrap manual from version 0.25 onwards; how exactly to go about it depends a bit on the rlwrap version.

In rlwrap 0.37 you do it like this:

INPUT=$(rlwrap -o -S ">" -P $INPUT cat)

The advantage of this approach is that every input variable can be given its own history and completion list (using the -f and -H options)

The cygwin version (0.24) is indeed ancient, but compiling rlwrap yourself should be painless. If you want to you can build a statically linked version (see the INSTALL file for instructions) and distribute it along with your script.

Upvotes: 1

Foo Bah
Foo Bah

Reputation: 26271

Turn off the -e to read. Then the two readline implementations won't clash.

To get the prompt, you can pass -S "> " to rlwrap.

Upvotes: 2

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