Re: [9fans] Small program "PlanKey" (paraphrase of DOSKey)

[Akshat Kumar <akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net>]

2009/1/26 Roman Shaposhnik <rvs@sun.com>:
...
> Yeah, that's about the only thing that is useful to me
> as well. The rest requires too much mousing around
> and in general it is quicker for me to compose the
> command line anew rather than trying to edit the
> bygones.
>

There are normally two cases in a rio rc window
with excessive output and commands floating
about:
(1) you want to retrieve a prior command and know
quite exactly what it is, or unique keywords to
identify it, but simply don't have the patience,
will-power, eyes, hands, whatever, to type it again
or go looking for it;
(2) you know the general output a command produced
but no clue as to what got you there, and due to
arthiritis or bleeding eyes syndrome, you cannot
be bothered to scroll up and find it, wa-wa... --
you want to retrieve a prior command.

In either case, a possible way of conveniently
retrieving ~ would be to make a script that looks
for a given keyword, of either (1) or (2), in the window's
file (/mnt/.../... -- I'm not on Plan 9 right now) containing
that scroll back information, and outputting possible
command choices in the style of /bin/kill and friends.
Then, in the case of (1), you can pipe it (or just the first
line of output, if the same command was entered
multiple times) to rc directly, or in the case of (2),
go through your choices, edit the commands, or
whatever, and `send'. This may have other benefits,
and it flows naturally from the Plan 9 style/functionality.

If I'm recycling ideas here, feel free to bitch.

normally something good comes of it anyways,
ak