commandline - set or get the current command line buffer¶
Synopsis¶
commandline [OPTIONS] [CMD]
Description¶
commandline can be used to set or get the current contents of the command line buffer.
With no parameters, commandline returns the current value of the command line.
With CMD specified, the command line buffer is erased and replaced with the contents of CMD.
The following options are available:
-Cor--cursorset or get the current cursor position, not the contents of the buffer. If no argument is given, the current cursor position is printed, otherwise the argument is interpreted as the new cursor position.-for--functioncauses any additional arguments to be interpreted as input functions, and puts them into the queue, so that they will be read before any additional actual key presses are. This option cannot be combined with any other option. See bind for a list of input functions.
The following options change the way commandline updates the command line buffer:
-aor--appenddo not remove the current commandline, append the specified string at the end of it-ior--insertdo not remove the current commandline, insert the specified string at the current cursor position-ror--replaceremove the current commandline and replace it with the specified string (default)
The following options change what part of the commandline is printed or updated:
-bor--current-bufferselect the entire buffer, including any displayed autosuggestion (default)-jor--current-jobselect the current job-por--current-processselect the current process-sor--current-selectionselects the current selection-tor--current-tokenselect the current token
The following options change the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer:
-cor--cut-at-cursoronly print selection up until the current cursor position-oor--tokenizetokenize the selection and print one string-type token per line
If commandline is called during a call to complete a given string using complete -C STRING, commandline will consider the specified string to be the current contents of the command line.
The following options output metadata about the commandline state:
-Lor--lineprint the line that the cursor is on, with the topmost line starting at 1-Sor--search-modeevaluates to true if the commandline is performing a history search-Por--paging-modeevaluates to true if the commandline is showing pager contents, such as tab completions
Example¶
commandline -j $history[3] replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the command line history.
If the commandline contains
>_ echo $fl___ounder >&2 | less; and echo $catfish
(with the cursor on the “o” of “flounder”)
Then the following invocations behave like this:
>_ commandline -t
$flounder
>_ commandline -ct
$fl
>_ commandline -b # or just commandline
echo $flounder >&2 | less; and echo $catfish
>_ commandline -p
echo $flounder >&2
>_ commandline -j
echo $flounder >&2 | less