4 Input/Output

Since Eshell does not communicate with a terminal like most command shells, IO is a little different.

4.1 Visual Commands

If you try to run programs from within Eshell that are not line-oriented, such as programs that use ncurses, you will just get garbage output, since the Eshell buffer is not a terminal emulator. Eshell solves this problem by running such programs in Emacs’s terminal emulator.

Programs that need a terminal to display output properly are referred to in this manual as “visual commands,” because they are not simply line-oriented. You must tell Eshell which commands are visual, by adding them to eshell-visual-commands; for commands that are visual for only certain sub-commands – e.g. ‘git log’ but not ‘git status’ – use eshell-visual-subcommands; and for commands that are visual only when passed certain options, use eshell-visual-options.

4.2 Redirection

Redirection is mostly the same in Eshell as it is in other command shells. The output redirection operators > and >> as well as pipes are supported, but there is not yet any support for input redirection. Output can also be redirected to buffers, using the >>> redirection operator, and Elisp functions, using virtual devices.

The buffer redirection operator, >>>, expects a buffer object on the right-hand side, into which it inserts the output of the left-hand side. e.g., ‘echo hello >>> #<buffer *scratch*>’ inserts the string "hello" into the *scratch* buffer.

eshell-virtual-targets is a list of mappings of virtual device names to functions. Eshell comes with two virtual devices: /dev/kill, which sends the text to the kill ring, and /dev/clip, which sends text to the clipboard.

You can, of course, define your own virtual targets. They are defined by adding a list of the form ‘("/dev/name" function mode)’ to eshell-virtual-targets. The first element is the device name; function may be either a lambda or a function name. If mode is nil, then the function is the output function; if it is non-nil, then the function is passed the redirection mode as a symbol–overwrite for >, append for >>, or insert for >>>–and the function is expected to return the output function.

The output function is called once on each line of output until nil is passed, indicating end of output.