rlwrap - readline wrapper

rlwrap [rlwrap-options] command ...

rlwrap runs the specified command, intercepting user input in order to supply readline's line editing, persistent history and completion. rlwrap tries to be as transparent as possible, keeping track of command's terminal settings, so that it can do the right thing when command asks for single keypresses or for a password.

Always use readline, regardless of command's terminal settings. Use this option you want to use rlwrap for commands that already use readline, e.g. to get rlwrap's history and completion. With this option, rlwrap will echo (and save) passwords; giving command's password prompt as an argument will prevent this.

Consider the specified characters word-breaking (whitespace is always word-breaking). This determines what is considered a "word", both when completing and when building a completion word list from files specified by -f options following (not preceding!) it. Default list (){}[],+-=&^%$#@"";|\ Unless -c is specified, / and . (period) are added to the default list.

Complete filenames (filename completion is always case-sensitive, even with the -i option)

Use command_name instead of command to find the names of history and completion files, and to initialise readline (according to ~/.inputrc). A numeric argument N means: use the Nth argument counting backwards from the end of the argument list.

Put all words from file on the completion word list. This option can be given more than once, and adds to the default completion list in $RLWRAP_HOME or /etc/rlwrap.

Print a short help message.

Read command history from file (and write it back there if --histsize >= 0)

Ignore case when completing. This option has to come before any -f options.

Append command's output (including echo'ed user input) to file (creating file when it doesn't exist).

Don't print warnings.

Enable multi-line input using a "newline substitute" character sequence (" \ ", [space-backslash-space] by default). Newline substitutes are translated to newlines before sending the input to command. With this option, you can call an external editor (vi by default) on the current input with the rlwrap_call_editor key (CTRL-^ by default)

Put all words seen on in- and output on the completion list.

Limit the history list to N entries, truncating the history file. A negative size -N means the same as N, but treats the history file as read-only.

Print rlwrap version.

Control + O

Accept current line, but don't put it in the history list. This action has a readline command name rlwrap_accept_line_and_forget

Control + ^

Use an external editor to edit the current input. This action has a readline command name rlwrap_call_editor

rlwraps special keys kan be re-bound by including a line like the following in ~/.inputrc:

"\M-\C-m":rlwrap_accept_line_and_forget # ESC-ENTER

cf. the readline(3) manpage for more about re-binding keys

RLWRAP_HOME: directory to keep the history and completion files.

RLWRAP_EDITOR (or EDITOR, or VISUAL): editor to use for multi-line input. Example:

    export RLWRAP_EDITOR="emacs -nw"
    export RLWRAP_EDITOR="vi +%L"

The last example is the default; %L and %C are replaced by line and column numbers corresponding to the cursor position in rlwrap

A number of signals are forwarded to command: HUP INT QUIT USR1 USR2 TERM and (by way of resizing commands terminal) WINCH. Some care is taken to handle TSTP (usually a result of a CTRL-Z from the terminal) sensibly.

non-zero after an error, or else command's exit status.

If $RLWRAP_HOME is not set, rlwrap uses hidden files in the users home directory

$RLWRAP_HOME/command_history, ~/.command_history

History for command

$RLWRAP_HOME/command_completions, ~/.command_completions

Per-user completion word list for command. rlwrap never writes into this list, but one can combine -l and -f options to to simulate the effect of a -r option that works across invocations.

/etc/rlwrap/command

System-wide completion word list for command. This file is only consulted if the per-user completion wordlist is not found.

$INPUTRC, ~/.inputrc

Individual readline initialization file (See readline (3) for its format). rlwrap sets its application name to command, enabling different behaviours for different commands. One could e.g. put the following lines in ~/.inputrc:

$if coqtop set show-all-if-ambiguous On $endif

making rlwrap show all completions whenever it runs coqtop

This manpage documents rlwrap version 0.24

The readline library (written by Chet Ramey) does all the hard work behind the scenes, the pty-handling code has been taken practically unchanged from rxvt-2.7.10 (currently maintained by Geoff C. Wing), and completion word lists are managed by Damian Ivereighs libredblack library. The few remaining lines of code were written by Hans Lub (hlub@knoware.nl).

readline(3)