bosh(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   bosh(1)

NAME

       bosh - Browsable Output SHell

SYNOPSIS

       bosh [OPTIONS] [CONFIGURATION] [CONFIGURATION OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

       bosh takes the output of a program or script and provides a curses interface to browse that output. A particular line of that output can be
       selected and actions can be defined and executed and make use of the that selected line.

USAGE

       CONFIGURATION is the name of a bosh configuration file (see below), in which case that is loaded.

       If CONFIGURATION is absent, and bosh is invoked on the end of a pipe, it will read from stdin.

       Bosh now supports passing arguments to the CONFIGURATION. The arguments will be available in the standard way ($1...$9,$*,$@,etc).

       Bosh can be invoked as above, or as "interpreter", meaning it can invoked from a shebang (#!) line at the top  of  a  script.  This  script
       would just be a bosh configuration file. See bops as an example, which should have come with bosh.

OPTIONS

       -h / --help
	      show help and exit

       -v / --version
	      show version and exit

       --autorefresh=N
	      Automatically re-run command every N seconds.

       --cursorsize=N
	      Set the cursor to N lines high.

       --cursormovement=N
	      Set how much the cursor moves one an up/down keypress.

       --header=[N]
	      Prevent the cursor from entering the first N rows of the output.

       --multilineseperator=STRING
	      When an action is invoked and the cursor is multi-line, the lines selected will be concatenated together.  With this setting a sepa-
	      rating string can be specified to be inserted between the lines.

       --preaction=COMMANDS
	      A command or commands that will be run on the invocation of all actions, before the action is run.  This allows code that is a  com-
	      mon  for	the actions to be only defined once. Preactions are simply prefixed onto the action when the action is invoked. This means
	      you will need to include a separating character (eg ;) at the end of preaction.

       --refresh=[0,1]
	      A value of 1 means that bosh will re-run the command after an action is performed.

       --uservars=N
	      Set the number of user variables ( of the form $BOSHVARx ) available. See the USER VARIABLES section below.

CONFIGURATION FILES

       Bosh configs are fairly simple. Firstly you need a line which tells bosh the actual program to execute to show it it's buffer -

	      command=ps x

       It could also be a chain of commands (bash) -

	      command=for i in *; do echo $i; done

       Or it can spread it over multiple lines for readability with a  (must be at the end of line!) -

	      command=for i in * 

	      do 

	      echo $i 

	      done

       Or now even better, bosh supports blocks delimited by {{ and }} -
	      command{{

	      for i in *

	      do

	      echo $i

	      done

	      }}

       These can be used with all options and actions.

       Command line arguments given to bosh after the COMMAND parameter are available and can be used as follows -

	      command=ps $*

       This would allow the user to specify the format of ps when invoking bosh.

       Commands can also set BOSHERR.  When execution of the command finishes, bosh will exit and display the value of BOSHERR if it has been set.

	      command=if [ -z "$1" ] 

	      then 

		       BOSHERR="usage: $BOSHCONF [SECTION] NAME" 

		       return 1 

	      fi 

	      man $*

       This will mean bosh exits immediately if no arguments are passed on the command line. Note the use of return rather than exit.

       After the command option, you can specify any of the options specified above in the OPTIONS section, but without the -- prefix -

	      header=4

	      refresh=1

ACTIONS

       Basic actions are defined as -

	      KEY=command

       eg:

	      k=kill $(echo $BOSH | cut -f1 -d' ')

	      9=kill -9 $(echo $BOSH | cut -f1 -d' ')

       Or, using the preaction setting (see above) -

	      preaction=PID=$(echo $BOSH | cut -f1 -d' ');

	      k=kill $PID

	      9=kill -9 $PID

       The keys available are a-z,0-9 and enter. Bosh keys are not case sensitive, so A= is the same as a=.

       $BOSH is an environment variable containing the currently selected line(s) in bosh. It is set when the action key is invoked. This  is  how
       information  is	passed	to the actions. In the example above, the PID is extracted from the currently selected line of the ps output using
       cut, which can then be passed to the kill command.

   ACTIONS WITH OUTPUT
       For basic actions such as kill, which has no output to stdout, the above definition is sufficient. However, bosh can now intercept the out-
       put of actions and place that in the bosh window. These are defined as follows -

	      KEY=[.]command
       Or,

       eg:

	      l=[.]/usr/sbin/lsof -p $PID

       Assuming  the preaction is used above, this action will use lsof to show in bosh a list of files that process $PID has open. In this situa-
       tion, the output of the original command is lost, and replaced with the output of the action.

       Alternatively an action can be defined -
	      KEY=[>]command

       In this situation, bosh is like a web browser, in that this output (lsof) will not override the current buffer, but create a new  buffer  -
       You  can get then move back and forward through these buffers with the left and right arrow keys. At this stage, actions are only available
       in the original buffer.

       The other possibility is that an action may be required that has output that isn't to be shown in the bosh window, such	as  other  curses-
       based applications. So the following syntax will make bosh end curses mode when this action is invoked.

	      KEY=[!]command

       eg: If the bosh window contained a list of files, an action like this could be used to load that file in pico.

	      e=[!]pico $BOSH

   ACTION PARAMETERS
       Actions can now have a prompt for user input before performing the action.  The value is available to the action using the $BOSHPARAM vari-
       able.

       eg: Using the ps example above, with PID preaction -

	      s=[!:signal] kill -s $BOSHPARAM $PID

       When this action is called, bosh will ask for user input with the prompt signal:  .  Once this has been entered, the action will run.

BOSH* VARIABLES:
       In addition to $BOSH , $BOSHPARAM and $BOSHERR (all explained above), the following variables available to actions -

       $BOSHPID
	      Process ID of bosh itself

       $BOSHPPID
	      Parent process ID of bosh (eg: the shell you ran bosh from)

   USER VARIABLES
       User variables are variables to be set and used by commands and actions. They are of the form $BOSHVARx.  When the command or action is run
       and sets a user variable, bosh will store the contents when that command or action has finished.  This allows the values to be used by sub-
       sequent actions. To make use of these, you must first set the uservars to the number you need (eg: uservars=1 will give you BOSHVAR1, user-
       vars=10 will give you BOSHVAR1 thru BOSHVAR10).

SHELLS

       Currently  bosh	only  supports bash as the shell that it spawns for executing the commands and actions.  Support for other shells and lan-
       guages will hopefully be included in the future.

EXAMPLE CONFIGURATION
:
       Included with bosh should be a simple configuration named bops. It uses ps as the main command, and allows you to kill the selected process
       or  view  its open files (using lsof). This is where the above examples are taken from. The original inspiration for bosh was being able to
       kill processes easily in this manner.

       To run bops, type -

	      $ ./bops

       This invokes bosh through the shebang at the top (assuming the path is set correctly).

       Or to run it the traditional way -

	      $ ./bosh ./bops

KEYS

       UP/DOWN
	      cursor up/down

       LEFT/RIGHT
	      buffer forward/back

       ^L     refresh screen

       ^O     run new command

       ^P     pipe buffer through a command, with the output of that pipe will become the buffer

       ^R     refresh program output (re-run the command)

       ^V     show the current configuration

       ^W     search

       ^N     repeat search

       ^X     exit

       F3     same as ^W

       F4     same as ^N

       F5     same as ^R

       F6     reload configuration

       F12    same as ^L

       |      same as ^P

STATUS BAR

       The status bar contains some further information about the current configuration. It shows with exit=num the last exit value of	a  command
       run  in	bosh.  Furthermore  a  R indicates that bosh is running with refresh option activated. In the status bar there will be a countdown
       shown if the autorefresh option is set.

AUTHOR

       Alex Sisson (alexsisson@gmail.com)

HOMEPAGE

       Check for updates at http://bosh.sourceforge.net

bosh-0.6							    18-MAR-2008 							   bosh(1)