enhance(1) [sunos man page]
enhance(1) User Commands enhance(1) NAME
enhance - enhanced command-line editing facilities SYNOPSIS
enhance command [argument...] DESCRIPTION
The enhance program provides enhanced command-line editing facilities to users of third party applications, to which one doesn't have any source code. It does this by placing a pseudo-terminal between the application and the real terminal. It uses the tecla command-line edit- ing library to read input from the real terminal, then forwards each just completed input line to the application via the pseudo-terminal. All output from the application is forwarded back unchanged to the real terminal. Whenever the application stops generating output for more than a tenth of a second, the enhance program treats the latest incomplete output line as the prompt, and redisplays any incompleted input line that the user has typed after it. Note that the small delay, which is imper- ceptible to the user, isn't necessary for correct operation of the program.It is just an optimization, designed to stop the input line from being redisplayed so often that it slows down output. Note that the user-level command-line editing facilities provided by the Tecla library are documented in the tecla(5) man page DEFICIENCIES The one major problem that hasn't been solved yet, is how to deal with applications that change whether typed input is echo'd by their con- trolling terminal. For example, programs that ask for a password, such as ftp and telnet, temporarily tell their controlling terminal not to echo what the user types. Since this request goes to the application side of the psuedo terminal, the enhance program has no way of knowing that this has happened, and continues to echo typed input to its controlling terminal, while the user types their password. Furthermore, before executing the host application, the enhance program initially sets the pseudo terminal to noecho mode, so that every- thing that it sends to the program doesn't get redundantly echoed. If a program that switches to noecho mode explicitly restores echoing afterwards, rather than restoring the terminal modes that were previously in force, then subsequently, every time that you enter a new input line, a duplicate copy will be displayed on the next line. FILES
/usr/lib/libtecla.so tecla library ~/.teclarc tecla personal customization file. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWesu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Evolving | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
libtecla(3LIB), attributes(5), tecla(5) SunOS 5.10 18 May 2004 enhance(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
libtecla(3) Library Functions Manual libtecla(3) NAME
libtecla - An interactive command-line input library. SYNOPSIS
gcc ... -ltecla -lcurses DESCRIPTION
The tecla library provides programs with interactive command line editing facilities, similar to those of the unix tcsh shell. In addition to simple command-line editing, it supports recall of previously entered command lines, TAB completion of file names or other tokens, and in-line wild-card expansion of filenames. The internal functions which perform file-name completion and wild-card expansion are also avail- able externally for optional use by the calling program. The various parts of the library are documented in the following man pages: tecla(7) - Use level documentation of the command-line editing facilities provided by gl_get_line(). gl_get_line(3) - The interactive line-input module. gl_io_mode(3) - How to use gl_get_line() in an incremental, non-blocking fashion. cpl_complete_word(3) - The word completion module. ef_expand_file(3) - The filename expansion module. pca_lookup_file(3) - A directory-list based filename lookup and completion module. In addition there is one optional application distributed with the library: enhance(1) - Add command-line editing to third party applications. THREAD SAFETY
If the library is compiled with -D_POSIX_C_SOURCE=199506L, reentrant versions of as many functions as possible are used. This includes using getpwuid_r() and getpwnam_r() instead of getpwuid() and getpwnam() when looking up the home directories of specific users in the password file (for ~user/ expansion), and readdir_r() instead of readdir() for reading directory entries when doing filename completion. The reentrant version of the library is usually called libtecla_r.a instead of libtecla.a, so if only the latter is available, it probably isn't the correct version to link with threaded programs. Reentrant functions for iterating through the password file aren't available, so when the library is compiled to be reentrant, TAB comple- tion of incomplete usernames in ~username/ expressions is disabled. This doesn't disable expansion of complete ~username expressions, which can be done reentrantly, or expansion of the parts of filenames that follow them, so this doesn't remove much functionality. The terminfo functions setupterm(), tigetstr(), tigetnum() and tputs() also aren't reentrant, but very few programs will want to interact with multiple terminals, so this shouldn't prevent this library from being used in threaded programs. LIBRARY VERSION NUMBER
The version number of the library can be queried using the following function. void libtecla_version(int *major, int *minor, int *micro); On return, this function records the three components of the libtecla version number in *major, *minor, *micro. The formal meaning of the three components is as follows. major - Incrementing this number implies that a change has been made to the library's public interface, which makes it binary incompatible with programs that were linked with previous shared versions of the tecla library. minor - This number is incremented by one whenever additional functionality, such as new functions or modules, are added to the library. micro - This is incremented whenever modifications to the library are made which make no changes to the public interface, but which fix bugs and/or improve the behind-the-scenes implementation. TRIVIA
In Spanish, a "tecla" is the key of a keyboard. Since this library centers on keyboard input, and given that I wrote much of the library while working in Chile, this seemed like a suitable name. FILES
libtecla.a - The tecla library. libtecla.h - The tecla header file. ~/.teclarc - The tecla personal customization file. SEE ALSO
gl_get_line(3), tecla(7), gl_io_mode(3), ef_expand_file(3), cpl_complete_word(3), pca_lookup_file(3), enhance(1) AUTHOR
Martin Shepherd (mcs@astro.caltech.edu) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Markus Gyger - Lots of assistance, including help with shared libraries, configuration information, particularly for Solaris; modifications to support C++ compilers, improvements for ksh users, faster cursor motion, output buffering, and changes to make gl_get_line() 8-bit clean. Mike MacFaden - Suggestions, feedback and testing that led to many of the major new functions that were added in version 1.4.0. Tim Eliseo - Many vi-mode bindings and fixes. libtecla(3)