From CLI:
go get github.com/lmorg/readline/v4
From Go code:
import "github.com/lmorg/readline/v4"
This package provides the interactive capabilities for various command line interfaces such as the shell Murex.
It also has experimental support for handling text input operations in GUI applications. However its primary focus is as a "batteries included" CLI input library.
This is a very rough and ready recording but it does demonstrate a few of the
features available in readline
. These features include:
- hint text (the blue status text below the prompt - however the colour is configurable)
- syntax highlighting (albeit there isn't much syntax to highlight in the example)
- tab-completion in gridded mode (seen when typing
cd
) - tab-completion in list view (seen when selecting an process name to
kill
and the process ID was substituted when selected) - regex searching through the tab-completion suggestions (seen in both
cd
andkill
- enabled by pressing[CTRL+f]
) - line editing using
$EDITOR
(vi
in the example - enabled by pressing[ESC]
followed by[v]
) readline
's warning before pasting multiple lines of data into the buffer- the preview option that's available as part of the aforementioned warning
- and VIM keys (enabled by pressing
[ESC]
)
Using readline
is as simple as:
func main() {
rl := readline.NewInstance()
for {
line, err := rl.Readline()
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("Error:", err)
return
}
fmt.Printf("You just typed: '%s'\n", line)
}
}
However I suggest you read through the examples in /examples
for help using
some of the more advanced features in readline
.
The source for readline
will also be documented in godoc: https://godoc.org/github.com/lmorg/readline/v4
Because the last thing a developer wants is to do is fix breaking changes after updating modules, I will make the following guarantees:
-
The version string will be based on Semantic Versioning. ie version numbers will be formatted
(major).(minor).(patch)
- for example2.0.1
-
major
releases will have breaking changes. Be sure to read CHANGES.md for upgrade instructions -
minor
releases will contain new APIs or introduce new user facing features which may affect useability from an end user perspective. Howeverminor
releases will not break backwards compatibility at the source code level and nor will it break existing expected user-facing behavior. These changes will be documented in CHANGES.md too -
patch
releases will be bug fixes and such like. Where the code has changed but both API endpoints and user experience will remain the same (except where expected user experience was broken due to a bug, then that would be bumped to either aminor
ormajor
depending on the significance of the bug and the significance of the change to the user experience) -
Any updates to documentation, comments within code or the example code will not result in a version bump because they will not affect the output of the go compiler. However if this concerns you then I recommend pinning your project to the git commit hash rather than a
patch
release
My recommendation is to pin to either the minor
or patch
release and I will
endeavour to keep breaking changes to an absolute minimum.
readline
hotkeys can be found in Murex's documentation.
While some of that document will be specific to Murex, the vast majority of
Murex's interactive capabilities is leveraged via this readline
package.
v4.0.0 marks a breaking change to the tab completion function.
Earlier versions expected multiple parameters to be returned however from v4.0.0 onwards, a pointer to a structure is instead expected:
type TabCompleterReturnT struct {
Prefix string
Suggestions []string
Descriptions map[string]string
DisplayType TabDisplayType
HintCache HintCacheFuncT
Preview PreviewFuncT
}
This allows for more configurability and without the cost of copying multiple different pieces of data nor future breaking changes whenever additional new features are added.
The full changelog can be viewed at CHANGES.md
readline
is licensed Apache 2.0. All the example code and documentation in
/examples
is public domain.