Query info from an existing screen session?

[Ryan B. Lynch]

I know that I can send commands to a running 'screen' session, using
the `screen -X <command>...` option, but it seems like this is a
one-way street.  This command never seems to return any output--if
there is any response, it's usually only visible inside the screen
session, itself.

Is if possible to query a running screen session for its parameters,
or at least redirect the status output, so that a detached script can
read, say, the current window list?

-Ryan


Ryan B. Lynch
ryan.b.lynch@...


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[Sadrul Habib Chowdhury]

* Ryan Lynch had this to say on [01 Oct 2009, 15:45:04 -0400]:

> I know that I can send commands to a running 'screen' session, using
> the `screen -X <command>...` option, but it seems like this is a
> one-way street.  This command never seems to return any output--if
> there is any response, it's usually only visible inside the screen
> session, itself.
>
> Is if possible to query a running screen session for its parameters,
> or at least redirect the status output, so that a detached script can
> read, say, the current window list?
>

Not yet. I am currently in the process of adding this support, however.
The basic framework to get back a response from an existing screen
session has been implemented. Now the commands need to be updated to
properly produce the response to send back as the query result. I am
going to update the 'info', 'lastmsg' and 'windows' commands for this
first. What other commands do you think a script might want to query?

Stay tuned!

Cheers,
Sadrul



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[Ryan B. Lynch]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 15:58, Sadrul Habib Chowdhury <imadil@...> wrote:
> properly produce the response to send back as the query result. I am
> going to update the 'info', 'lastmsg' and 'windows' commands for this
> first. What other commands do you think a script might want to query?

Great to hear that, I'll get a lot of use out of that feature.  I
think 'displays' and 'echo' belong on the "must-have" list.

Some kind of access to the registers would be really helpful--here's a
suggestion:

 - the 'paste' command accepts '-' (dash) as a special register name
 - any data 'paste'ed to the destination reg '-' gets piped to the
application process's standard output

'dinfo' would be nice to have, too, but that's not really critical.

-Ryan


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[Ryan B. Lynch]

On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 18:32, Ryan Lynch <ryan.b.lynch@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 15:58, Sadrul Habib Chowdhury <imadil@...> wrote:
>> properly produce the response to send back as the query result. I am
>> going to update the 'info', 'lastmsg' and 'windows' commands for this
>> first. What other commands do you think a script might want to query?
>
> Great to hear that, I'll get a lot of use out of that feature.  I
> think 'displays' and 'echo' belong on the "must-have" list.
>
> Some kind of access to the registers would be really helpful--here's a
> suggestion:
>
>  - the 'paste' command accepts '-' (dash) as a special register name
>  - any data 'paste'ed to the destination reg '-' gets piped to the
> application process's standard output
>
> 'dinfo' would be nice to have, too, but that's not really critical.

Also, on a slightly related note, do you (or anybody, really) know
whether the patch described in the 2nd answer, here, was ever
submitted for inclusion?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1318210/gnu-screen-environment-variables

It allows a usage like this:

^A :readbuf !cat $HOME/projects/foobar/file.txt

which just reads the content of that file into the buffer.

-Ryan


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