PROMPT(1)PROMPT(1)NAME
prompt - give any program command-line editing facilities
SYNOPSIS
prompt
DESCRIPTION
prompt is a simple wrapper which provides command-line editing for programs that do not have it.
Not all programs with a command line interface provide an input history or even the ability to use the cursor keys to change the input. The
prompt program wraps any program, intercepting stdin, stdout and stderr and providing the user with such editing facilities.
SEE ALSO modglue(1). ptywrap(1).
See the web page at http://www.aei.mpg.de/~peekas/modglue/ for more information.
AUTHORS
Kasper Peeters <kasper.peeters@aei.mpg.de>
Jul 12, 2008 PROMPT(1)
Check Out this Related 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)