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From: | Jim Porter |
Subject: | bug#25270: eshell -- programmatically send input -- feature request |
Date: | Sun, 15 May 2022 22:46:47 -0700 |
On 5/13/2022 7:02 AM, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
Keith David Bershatsky <esq@lawlist.com> writes:As far as I am aware, users of eshell have been limited to sending input programmatically by inserting the command into the eshell buffer (at the command prompt) and then executing `eshell-send-input`. Some users (like myself) may feel that such a solution is lo-tech -- i.e., not very eloquent.[...]The following is an example of how this new feature might be implemented: SAMPLE USAGE: (eshell-send-input nil nil nil "ls -la /") (require 'eshell) (defun eshell-send-input (&optional use-region queue-p no-newline input-string-a)(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately weren't resolved at the time.) I think this makes sense, but I'm not very familiar with eshell internals, so I've added Jim to the CCs; perhaps he has some comments.
Hm, I think it's reasonable to have something similar to `comint-send-string' for Eshell, but I'm not quite sure what the best way to do this would be. I think a separate function, like `eshell-send-string', would probably be a nicer API, since it could be called like `comint-send-string'.
Also, for the code posted in the original message, I'm not sure the changes to `eshell-parse-command' are needed. It should already let you pass a command string to it. Maybe this is because there's an issue with how `eshell-parse-command' temporarily inserts COMMAND into the buffer (see the FIXME comment in the code in the original message)? If there is, we'd probably have to think quite a bit more about how to resolve it.
Some background: I think it would be pretty risky to try to perform Eshell argument parsing anywhere *but* in the contents of the current Eshell buffer, as in `eshell-parse-arguments--temp-buffer' in the original message. See `eshell-with-temp-command' in Emacs 29 (which is what the FIXME comment morphed into), in particular this part:
;; Since parsing relies partly on buffer-local state ;; (e.g. that of `eshell-parse-argument-hook'), we need to ;; perform the parsing in the Eshell buffer.Basically, Eshell is extremely flexible, and argument parsing is handled by `eshell-parse-argument-hook', which can do all sorts of things to change how arguments are parsed, and may even be buffer-local to a particular Eshell instance. Parsing Eshell arguments anywhere but the "target" Eshell buffer is asking for trouble.
I'll see if I can put together a patch along the above line in the next couple weeks.
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