Re: monitor screen output

[Sebastian Stark <sstark+zsh@mailbox.org>]

Am Montag, den 11. November 2024 um 17:45 schrieb Ray Andrews:
>All:
>
>Can zsh monitor screen output in a backgroundy sort of way?  Say I 
>have several programs that might at some time or other output some 
>message, can zsh keep an eye on the screen any time it is written to 
>and detect that message and act upon it?

If you want it to be done natively in zsh you could probably use the 
zpty module (see zshmodules(1)):

Load the module:

   $ zmodload zsh/zpty

Start top in the background. That would be your program to monitor.
It will get the handle 'top'. You may start several programs with 
different handles:

   $ zpty top top

Read from the pseudo terminal into "var" until pattern "*mutt*" was 
found:

   $ zpty -r top var "*neomutt*"

Now Start neomutt in another shell. Above command should return after a 
couple seconds and $var should contain the top output including the 
matched text.

Cancel the background process if you are done:

   $ zpty -d top


Expect is probably the saner option to use.


Sebastian