wish for console extention

[newdep]

Hi Lutz,



Im missing something lazy ;-)

Actualy "Character/function Completion" on the console would be a wonder!



i.e.



> (diff  <tab>

> (difference



or



> (print ti <tab>

> (print time





Is it a possible Feature request ? ;-)



Regards,



Norman.

[Lutz]

It works already for filenames, you could put a file each with a name of a function in the directory you are working in ;)



To integrate such a mechnism into newLISP would make it too bloated and dependent on additional libraries. But integrating this into the current newlisp-tk.tcl shell would be not too hard. The Tcl/Tk console already handles several special charcaters.



What would be even better is a newLISP special editor doing all of this and more (written in newLISP!?). But on my to-do list are other things more urgent, so I don't think this will happen soon, unless some body else does it?



Lutz

[Dmi]

Lutz!

Can newlisp console cmdline not to read directly from stdin, but call some newlisp function? (possible, two functions: one for read user command and one for write to console)



Then default function may be as simple as (read-line), but everyone will got ability to write more complex and flexible version.

Also, that will be very portable solution.

And will be great for scripting.



I think, if newlisp C-code will work such way, then many of us will do some useful (and public available) customisations.



...and we'll write new emacs ;-)))



P.S. I remember about lisps "read-eval-print"... But I'm not strong in lisp :-)

[Lutz]

Input is already read from standard in and console output goes to standard out. When using the command line switches -p, -d or -x standard I/O gets redirected to the communications port. This current scenario gives maximum I/O speed and I don't want to burden with special functions processing input/output characters, trying to keep newLISP small and fast.



If somebody wants to improve the interactive command line a special shell could be written communicating with newLISP, i.e. the way the newlisp-tk shell works.



Most people use the interactive command-line only for small stuff and for debugging/testing and develop programs using an external editor.



How about writing a newLISP editor/shell right now? Norman showed us a while ago how to quickly interface with the curses libray. That should be enought to write an Emacs like editor ;)



Lutz

[Dmi]

I just seen the code in newlisp.c

Oh! I found readline here! I got it, and now it is fantastic :-)



But return to the code. I mean this loop

while(TRUE)...{

 fgets(command,..., IOChannel)

 executeCommandLine(command, OUT_CONSOLE,...

}

plus some stuff in executeCommandLine, debug etc.



I'm about modfying fgets into call to (read-user-input) or so.

And I think interactive loop is not a point of IO perf. degradation.

...And interactive debugging/testing is not so small amount of work when writing code.



But now - having readline, I'll be more fun with existing features.



About emacs... Really I have fun with vim ;-)

But shell... it's a point to think about.

[HPW]

The Tcl Editor 'ASED Tcl/Tk IDE' has a nice completition feature:



http://www.tcl-home.de/ased/asedhome.htm">http://www.tcl-home.de/ased/asedhome.htm



Maybe newLISP-TK can also use the cText-widget.