I am searching for a highly stable way to feed text (output of a program) into vim through vimserver. Assume that I have started a (g)vim session with gvim --servername vim myfile. The file myfile contains a (unique) line OUT: which marks the position where the text should be pasted. I can straight forwardly achieve this from the commandline with vim --servername vim --remote-send ':%s/OUT:/TEXT\\rOUT:/<Enter>'. I can repeatedly feed more text using the same command. Inside a C-program I can execute it with system(). However TEXT which is dynamic and arbitrary (received as a stream in the C-program) needs to be passed on the command line and hence it needs to be escaped. Furthermore using the replacement command %s vim will jump to the position where TEXT is inserted. I would like to find a way to paste large chunks of arbitrary text seamlessly in vim. An idea is to have vim read from a posix pipe with :r pipe and to write the the string from within the C-program to the pipe. Ideally the solution would be such that I can continuously edit the same file manually without noting that output is added at OUT: as long as this location is outside the visible area.
The purpose of this text feed is to create a command line based front end for scripting languages. The blocks of input is entered manually by the user in a vim buffer and is being sent to the interpreter through a pipe using vim's :! [interpreter] command. The [interpreter] can of course write the output to stdout (preceded by the original lines of input) in which case the input line is replaced by input and output (to be distinguished using some leading key characters for instance). However commands might take a long time to produce the actual output while the user might want to continue editing the file. Therefore my idea is to have [interpreter] return OUT: immediately and to append subsequent lines of output in this place as they become available using vimserver. However the output must be inserted in a way which does not disturb or corrupt the edits possibly made by the user at the same time.
EDIT
The proposed solutions seem to work.
However there seem to be at least two caveats: * if I send text two or more times this way the `` part of the commands will not take me back to the original cursor position (if I do it just once still the markers are modified which may interrupt the user editing the file manually) * if the user opens a different buffer (e.g. the online help) the commands will fail (or maybe insert the text in the present buffer)
Any ideas?
EDIT: After actually trying, this should work for you:
vim --servername vim --remote-send \
":set cpo+=C<CR>/OUT:<CR>:i<CR>HELLO<CR>WORLD<CR>.<CR>\`\`"
As far as I can see, the only caveats would be the period on a single line, which would terminate :insert instead of being inserted, and <..> sequences that might be interpreted as keypresses. Also, need to replace any newlines in the text with <CR>. However, you have no worries about regular expressions getting muddled, the input is not the command line, the amount of escaping necessary is minimal, and the jumping is compensated for with the double backticks.
Check out :help 'cpoptions', :help :insert, and :help ''.
Instead of dealing with the escaping, I would rather use lower-level functions. Use let lnum = search('^OUT:$') to locate the marker line, and call setline(lnum, [text, 'OUT:']) to insert the text and the marker line again.
Related
Trying to debug a program in Scilab, I inserted a couple
of "print" instructions to track what is going on.
At first, I used the %io(2) output "file" which, according
to the Help, stands for the console. Nothing happened.
Then I used an actual filename:
print("C:\Leszek\Xprmnt\scl\Ovsjanko\K3ScilabLog.txt", "START! \n \n \n \n GOING \n")
which does print to that file, but when the dust has settled
and I want to inspect the file what I find inside is just the last
message (just before the program crashed), even though there should
have been others before it, including the "START" etc in the quote above.
Apparently, every print command reopens the file for writing as a clean slate,
overwriting whatever was in it before. Looking into Help and online docs
I didn't find any options or parameters that I could use to change this.
What I want is, obviously, the output from all my print commands since the
beginning of the program, either on the console or in a text file.
TIA.
Just use disp("some text") or mprintf("format",var1,...,varn), both will display on the console. If you need to write in a file use fd = mopen("file.txt") then mfprint(fd,"format",var1,...,varn).
I am trying to code a little console chat-program in C on linux.
So far I coded it in a way that both chatting partners are only able to alternately send/recv, because these function calls are blocking by default.
Now I would like to modify that program, so that both are able to send and receive simultaneously.
The problem that I find is, that once you typed some input to the terminal, I don't know how to output received messages, without messing up the current input line of the terminal.
If there was a way to delete that current input line, you could temporarily save that line, print the new message and put the input line right back.
However, I was not able to find a solution for this problem on the internet.
Is it possible to delete the current input line, and if not, how else could I achieve what I want?
I think you should look into ncurses as Edd said in his comment.
It would allow you to easily manage contents in your terminal window, which sounds like a good idea for your chat program.
All you'd need to do is store your messages in 2 character arrays:
char incoming[MSG_MAX]
and
char outgoing[MSG_MAX]
Then you can output those messages wherever you want in your terminal window, since ncurses allows you to specify x,y coordinates on where to put your text.
Then a simple wrapper for one of ncurses erase() family functions would allow you to delete characters from specify x,y coordinates in your terminal window.
Edit: MSG_MAX is not an actual ncurses macro.
Some applications running in terminal can erase their outputs. e.g.
when it tells you to wait, it will show a sequence of dots alternating between different lengths.
How is erasing output in terminal implemented in C? Is it done by reverse line feed?
Can a program only erase the previous characters in the current line, not the characters in the previous line in stdout?
Thanks.
It depends on the terminal.
The COMSPEC shell on Windows (often called the DOS prompt or command.com) exposes an API in C to control the cursor. I haven't done any Windows programming so I can't tell you much about it.
Most other terminals (especially on unixen) emulate protocols that resemble the VT100 serial terminal (the VT100 terminal was a physical device, a monitor and keyboard, that you attached to a modem or serial port to communicate with a server).
On VT100 terminals, carriage return and line feed are separate commands, both one byte. The carriage return command sets the cursor to the beginning of the line. The line feed command moves the cursor down a line (but doesn't bring the cursor to the beginning of the line by itself). Most shells on unixen automatically insert a carriage return after a line feed but almost none inserts a line feed after a carriage return.
With this knowledge, the simplest implementation is to simply output a carriage return and reprint the entire line:
printf("\rprogress: %d percent ", x);
Note the extra spaces at the end of the line. Printing "\r" doesn't erase the line so reprinting over the old line may end up leaving some of the old string on screen. The extra spaces is used to try and erase the remainder of the old line.
If you googled "VT100 escape secquence", you'll find commands that will allow you to do things like erase the current line, change color of text, goto a specific row/column on screen etc. The most popular use of VT100 sequences is to output coloured text. But you can also do other things with them.
The next simplest implementation is to cleanly delete the line and reprint it:
printf("\033[2K\rprogress: %d percent", x);
The \033[2K is the escape sequence to delete the current line (ESC[2K).
From here you can get more creative if you want. You can use the cursor save/restore command with the erase until end of line command to only erase the part you want to update (instead of the entire line). You can use the goto commands to put the cursor in a specific location on screen to update text there etc.
It should be noted that the more advanced stuff such as VT102 sequences or some of the full ANSI escape sequences are generally not portable accross terminals (by terminals I don't mean the shell, I mean the terminals: rxvt, xterm, linux terminal, hyperterminal(on windows) etc).
If you want portability (and/or sane API) you should use the curses or ncurses libraries.
If you wanted to know how it's done, then that's how it's done. It's just printing specially formatted strings to screen (except for the COMSPEC shell). Kind of like HTML but old-school.
I'm trying to automatically retrieve data from a COM port using a batch file.
I'm able to configure the com port and to send the command in other to ask my device for the info.
The problem is that I'm not able to capture the data that the device sends. I've tried with RealTerm and the device is working and sends the info back to the pc, but I really need the batch file to do it automatically, here is the code:
echo off
MODE COMxx ...
COPY retrievecommand.txt \\\\.\COMxx:
COPY \\\\.\COMxx: data.txt
Any suggestions?
Use the TYPE command in a recursive loop using the DOS GOTO command to a DOS LABEL. Use 'append output' to capture text like TYPE COM1:>>Data.txt The double > means continually concatenate (or append) to Data.txt. A single > or 'redirect output' would replace the text in Data.txt every loop (if com data present on port). Add a 2nd line that redirects to the monitor screen so you can watch activity too (i.e. TYPE COM1:>CON [CON means console or monitor screen but you can omit it as console is default anyway])
Control-Z is not needed by TYPE command. It will just dump text continually until operator does a Control-C and then a Y to break the loop. You really don't need to stop the loop unless you are done with the batch file all together. The Data.txt file will be available to other programs live and will not present a 'Sharing Violation' if you try to access it with another program like NOTEPAD.EXE while this batch file is still looping.
Also if you make a 3rd line in the batch file that says TYPE COM1:>Data1.txt [notice only one redirect], you will have a single line of instant text that will disappear with next iteration. But sometimes that is helpful if you need only one line of data. There are creative ways to extract one line of data to another text file using the DOS FIND command.
When reading, the COPY command will continue until it detects the end of file. As the source is a device (with a potentially infinite stream) it only knows to stop when it detects an end of file marker. This is the Ctrl-Z (0x1A) character.
The suggestion in the duplicate question of using the TYPE command to read is likely to result in the same problem.
There is no standard mechanism to read a single line. If you can port your application to PowerShell, you should be able to read single lines with the results you expect.
I am working with a text file, which contains a list of processes under my programs control, along with relevant data.
At some point, one of the processes will finish, and thus will need to be removed from the file (as its no longer under control).
Here is a sample of the file contents (which has enteries added "randomly"):
PID=25729 IDLE=0.200000 BUSY=0.300000 USER=-10.000000
PID=26416 IDLE=0.100000 BUSY=0.800000 USER=-20.000000
PID=26522 IDLE=0.400000 BUSY=0.700000 USER=-30.000000
So for example, if I wanted to remove the line that says PID=26416.... how could I do that, without writing the file over again?
I can use external unix commands, however I am not very familiar with them so please if that is your suggestion, give an example.
Thanks!
Either you keep the contents of the file in temporary memory and then rewrite the file. Or you could have a file for each of the PIDs with the relevant information in them. Then you simply delete the file when it's no longer running. Or you could use a database for this instead.
As others have already pointed out, your only real choice is to rewrite the file.
The obvious way to do that with "external UNIX commands" would be grep -v "PID=26416" (or whatever PID you want to remove, obviously).
Edit: It is probably worth mentioning that if the lines are all the same length (as you've shown here) and order doesn't matter, you could delete a line more efficiently by copying the last line into the space being vacated, then shorten the file so eliminate what had been the last line. This will only work if they really are all the same length though (e.g., if you got a PID of '1', you'd need to pad it to the same length as the others in the file).
The only way is by copying each character that comes after the deleted line down over the characters that are deleted.
It is far more efficient to simply rewrite the file.
how could I do that, without writing the file over again?
You cannot. Filesystems (perhaps besides more esoteric record based ones) does not support insertion or deletion.
So you'll have to write the lines to a temporary file up till the line you want to delete, skip over that line, and write the rest of the lines to the file. When done, rename/copy the temp file to the original filename
Why are you maintaining these in a text file? That's not the best model for such a task. But, if you're stuck with it ... if these lines are guaranteed to all be the same length (it appears that way from the sample), and if the order of the lines in the file doesn't matter, then you can write the last line over the line for the process that has died and then shorten the file by one line with the (f)truncate() call if you're on a POSIX system: see Jonathan Leffler's answer in How to truncate a file in C?
But note carefully netrom's answer, which gives three different better ways to maintain this info.
Also, if you stick with a text file (preferably written from scratch each time from data structures you maintain, as per netrom's first suggestion), and you want to be sure that the file is always well formed, then write the new data into a temp file on the same device (putting it in the same directory is easiest) and then do a rename() call, which is an atomic operation.
You can use sed:
sed -i.bak -e '/PID=26416/d' test
-i is for editing in place. It also creates a back-up file with the new extension .bak
-e is for specifying the pattern. The /d indicates all lines matching the pattern should be deleted.
test is the filename
The unix command for it is:
grep -v "PID=26416" myfile > myfile.tmp
mv myfile.tmp myfile
The grep -v part outputs the file without the rows with the search term.
The > myfile.tmp part creates a new temp file for this output.
The mv part renames the temp file to the original file.
Note that we are rewriting the file here, and moreover, we can lose data if someone write something to file between the two commands.