Question

Hi I would like to create a small program that listens for copy comands copied content for later retrival in bash. Is it possible to listen to key strokes while still keeping the shell interactive? And how can this be don arcitectualy. I don’t need the whole program just a hint at how it can be done. I have no preferance when it comes to language exept that it should be implemented in a scripting language or maby c++.

Pherhaps this needs to be written like a shell extension or somthing. just a hint would be fine.

Answer 1

Consider the way that the script program works (see man script). I havn’t done this in a while, but basically you write your pseudo terminal in C and push that into the stream, then launch the shell.

See tcgetattr/tcsetattr, grantpt, unlockpt, and ptsname, with ptem, ldterm and possibly ttcompat to be pushed using ioctl.

A simpler, though less efficient, is to run script into a pipe and capture the output. You probably will need script -f to flush the buffer (I think the -f is only in the GNU version).