I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

Ashren · 2008-04-17 09:45:47

Hi,

I have no idea if a program that does the following exists. The concept is a bit hard to explain but I'll do my best.

Lets say that you have to terminals opened. In terminal 1 you are currently working in ~/build/foobar and in terminal 2 you are working in ~/archiscool/foobar/letshaveadrink/ and you want to copy a file from ~/build/foobar to ~/archiscool/foobar/letshaveadrink. The usual way of doing this would be to type

"[user@host ~/build/foobar/]$ cp foobar ~/archiscool/foobar/letshaveadrink/"

and it is usually very quick to do with completion, but it would be much easier if one could build a script (lets call it "t2dir") that could identify the working dir of terminal 2. Then you'd only have to type

"[user@host~/build/foobar/]$ cp foobar t2dir".

Would it possible to probe terminals for their working directories?

Last edited by Ashren (2008-04-17 09:47:00)

finferflu · 2008-04-17 09:51:22

I bet you would need a kind of daemon that keeps track of all the terminals and their current working directory. So then you would be presented with multiple choices, a list of all the working directories of all open terminals, when pressing the TAB key twice, perhaps...
That's all I can think of, since I'm not a programmer...

danielsoft · 2008-04-17 10:00:45

finferflu wrote:

I bet you would need a kind of daemon that keeps track of all the terminals and their current working directory. So then you would be presented with multiple choices, a list of all the working directories of all open terminals, when pressing the TAB key twice, perhaps...
That's all I can think of, since I'm not a programmer...

in fact, working directories are not associated to terminals, but to processes i.e. running instances of programs: each has its own - and not only shells like bash, but any else

there is a link /proc/123/cwd, which points to a working directory of a process , where 123 is the PID (known from the "ps" command)

this can help hacking this together...

freakcode · 2008-04-17 15:14:00

Would be very cool if I could, e.g.:

$ cp this_file.txt /dev/pts/1

I point the file to my other terminal (pts/1), and then it finds what's the current working dir of pts/1 and copies the fle there.

Ashren · 2008-04-17 15:21:17

freakcode, that's exactly the idea. Thanks for the pointers Danielsoft, I'll try to figure out how to do this. Suggestions and even working code are of course more than welcome.

freakcode · 2008-04-17 15:54:22

I guess it can only be implemented:
- Using a daemon that keeps track of all your VCs and the current working dir. Then use a special copy command (say, "cpt <file> <term>") that does the job.
- Creating another shell that implements a method to handle cp to /dev/pts device files in a different way.

As most people have their favourite shell already (bash, dash, zsh, ...), I guess the first way is more feasible.

Edit: I'm thinking of using aliases and a daemon. I guess it will work good. Expect some hack here soon

Edit2: No daemon needed to track down the working dir. Danielsoft mentioned a simple way for finding it.

Last edited by freakcode (2008-04-18 00:36:42)

Ashren · 2008-04-17 16:12:15

Great!

danielsoft · 2008-04-17 21:56:54

freakcode wrote:

I guess it can only be implemented:
- Using a daemon that keeps track of all your VCs and the current working dir. Then use a special copy command (say, "cpt <file> <term>") that does the job.
- Creating another shell that implements a method to handle cp to /dev/pts device files in a different way.
As most people have their favourite shell already (bash, dash, zsh, ...), I guess the first way is more feasible.
Edit: I'm thinking of using aliases and a daemon. I guess it will work good. Expect some hack here soon

don't forget the backtick mechanism: with that, you don't need a special cp nor special shell

cp file `pwd_of /dev/ptsX`
mv file `pwd_of /dev/ptsY`

where the command will return the path (we still don't know how) and the backticks would insert it into any other command

Ashren · 2008-04-17 23:18:49

Where are these paths being stored? I'm really intrigued.

freakcode · 2008-04-17 23:25:22

Here's something that will give the desired behaviour. You can put this script somewere on your PATH, and alias it to the "cp" command - it should behave just like the standard "cp" if you specify a directory instead of a terminal device as target, so it supersedes it.

I did it in Ruby because it's quick and simple, but the logic is simple, it should be reproducible even on plain shell scripting (with a lot more of pain, of course).

#!/usr/bin/ruby

if (ARGV.empty?) || (ARGV[0] == "-h") || (ARGV.size < 2)
  STDERR.puts <<EOS
Usage: #{$0} [-h] <file> <target>

If <target> is a terminal device (under /dev/), the copy operation will occur
to the terminal current working dir. Otherwise, will be treated as a path.

EOS
  exit 1
end

file   = ARGV[0].to_s.strip
target = ARGV[1].to_s.strip

if File.directory? target
  path = target
else
  unless (pts = target.split("/dev/")[1])
    STDERR.puts "Invalid target: #{target}"
    exit 1
  end
  if (pid = `pgrep -n -t #{pts}`).empty?
    STDERR.puts "Cannot determine pwd of device: #{pts}"
    exit 1
  end
  path = `pwdx #{pid}`.split(": ")[1].strip
  unless File.directory? path
    STDERR.puts path
    exit 1
  end
end

`cp #{file} #{path}`

The script will identify nested shells inside a terminal. So, if you open a terminal, and then run another shell again, the script will assume the working dir from the innermost shell.

More test are welcome, maybe I forgot some error checking. I'm not sure how it behaves running under a non-Bash shell too.

Last edited by freakcode (2008-04-18 00:33:06)

Ashren · 2008-04-17 23:38:36

This is so very cool. A very nice feature when file managing in a tiling window manager.

Thank you very much. Now I just have to switch over to awesome so I can have window titles with /dev/pts/X numbers on them.

Thanks again. I'll have to look into this ruby business now.

EDIT: Forgot to say that it works perfectly under bash btw. I'll do some more testing of course.

Last edited by Ashren (2008-04-17 23:42:52)

freakcode · 2008-04-17 23:55:50

Well, you can display the pts in the title of a terminal window with this on .bashrc :

echo -n -e "\e]0;`tty`\a"

It's a good complement to this script, or a tilling WM.

And thanks for your idea, now it's a lot easier to copy files from one terminal working dir to another, I just need to specify the pts from the title bar.

Last edited by freakcode (2008-04-18 00:13:36)

Ashren · 2008-04-18 00:13:19

Yay! I can stick with ol' faithful dwm. Thanks and you're welcome.

This thread shows just how great this community is IMO.

finferflu · 2008-04-18 07:23:46

Wow! this is cool, I gotta try it out. Thanks a lot

Ashren · 2008-04-18 12:30:29

To make copying even easier I made the following change to my .bashrc:

echo -n -e "\e]0;`tty`\a"
t0="/dev/pts/0"
t1="/dev/pts/1"
t2="/dev/pts/2"
t3="/dev/pts/3"
t4="/dev/pts/4"
t5="/dev/pts/5"
t6="/dev/pts/6"

So I can copy to a working directory with the following command: cpt foobar $t1

Last edited by Ashren (2008-04-18 12:32:55)

peets · 2008-04-18 13:09:32

Here's an alternative: use `ls /dev/pts` to get a list of running ttys and present that list to the user and let them choose the destination. That way they won't have to know the "/dev/pts" number of the tty they want to copy to. It will be nice to people who use title-bar-less windows (like me).

#!/bin/sh

# Find out the PIDS of running ttys
PIDS=""
for PTS in $(ls /dev/pts); do
    #echo "$PTS"
    PID=$(pgrep -nt "pts/$PTS")
    #echo "$PID"
    if [ $PID != $$ ]; then
        PIDS="$PIDS $PID"
    fi
done

# Count the PIDS
i=0
for PID in $PIDS; do
    i=$(($i + 1))
done

# Behave differently based on number of available destinations
case $i in
    0)
    echo "No other tty to copy to. Ignoring."
    exit 1
    ;;
    1)
    DEST=$(pwdx $PIDS)
    #echo "$DEST"
    echo "Only one possible destination. Copying to $DEST."
    exit $(cp "$1" "$DEST")
    ;;
    *) # Many destinations
    j=0
    for PID in $PIDS; do
        j=$(($j + 1))
        echo "$j. $(pwdx $PID | sed -r -e's/^[0-9]+: //')"
    done
    echo "Select destination by entering its number (1, 2, etc.): "
    read NUM
    if [ $NUM -lt 1 ]; then
        echo "Error: there is no number smaller than 1 in the list."
        exit 2
    elif [ $NUM -gt $j ]; then
        echo "Error: there is no number greater than $j in the list."
        exit 3
    elif [ $NUM -gt 0 ] && [ $NUM -le $j ]; then
        k=1
        for PID in $PIDS; do
            if [ $k -eq $NUM ]; then
                DEST="$(pwdx $PID | sed -r -e's/^[0-9]+: //')"
                exit $(cp "$1" "$DEST")
            fi
            k=$(($k + 1))
        done
    else
        echo "Error: cannot understand what you wrote."
        exit 4
    fi
    ;;
esac

When in sh, I'm paranoid about spaces and metacharacters and globs and I don't know how to use arrays. I guess this explains the weird structure of the script.
It sucks that it doesn't check for duplicates when listing out possible destinations... I should write this in a more comfortable language like perl. But I should go do some real work now.

Last edited by peets (2008-04-18 14:39:04)

peets · 2008-04-18 13:26:46

Furthermore,

alias cut='echo "$1" > ~/.cutbuffer'
alias paste='cp $(cat ~/.cutbuffer) $PWD'

but whatever's "cut" should be an absolute path.

jot · 2008-04-19 06:31:28

Hi, my script lists pts number and current directory of this pts. It uses ls -l to get directory name from /proc/$PID/@cwd. I noticed it differs from peets' , it returns the pid of shell and not the pid of process running in that shell. It's an ugly script and it can be better, i know.

#! /bin/bash
set +x # for debug, + debug off, - debug on

for i in `ps ax | grep "pts.*$SHELL" | grep -v grep | sort | awk '{print $2 "_" $1}'`
do
   PTS=`echo ${i/_*/} |sed 's/pts\///'`
   PID=`echo ${i/*_/}`
   echo "$PTS: `ls -l /proc/$PID/ | sed -n 's/.*cwd -> //p'`"
done
echo
read ptsnum

termpath=$(ls -l /proc/`ps ax | grep "pts/$ptsnum.*$SHELL" | grep -v grep | cut -d" " -f2`/ | sed -n 's/.*cwd -> //p')

if [ "$1" != "" -a "$termpath" != "" ]
then
   echo -e "\nCopying $PWD/$1 to $termpath/$1"
   cp "$1" "$termpath" && echo Done.
elif [ "$termpath" = "" ]
then
   echo -e "\n/dev/pts/$ptsnum not found :("
fi

Arch Linux

#1 2008-04-17 09:45:47

I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#2 2008-04-17 09:51:22

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#3 2008-04-17 10:00:45

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#4 2008-04-17 15:14:00

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#5 2008-04-17 15:21:17

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#6 2008-04-17 15:54:22

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#7 2008-04-17 16:12:15

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#8 2008-04-17 21:56:54

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#9 2008-04-17 23:18:49

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#10 2008-04-17 23:25:22

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#11 2008-04-17 23:38:36

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#12 2008-04-17 23:55:50

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#13 2008-04-18 00:13:19

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#14 2008-04-18 07:23:46

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#15 2008-04-18 12:30:29

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#16 2008-04-18 13:09:32

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#17 2008-04-18 13:26:46

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

#18 2008-04-19 06:31:28

Re: I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

Board footer