Hacking urxvt scripts -- Perl help needed [FINISHED]

Question

Before I start, I have no knowledge of Perl, and I'm finding it a fairly challenging language to read.
I have one last thing that I want for urxvt to make it just right. I'd like to be able to select some text from the terminal, and launch a search in a browser using only the mouse. I started with the first example in the urxvtperl man pages:
sub on_sel_grab {
warn "you selected ", $_[0]->selection;
I saved it to a file called 'grab' in my $HOME directory, and involked it with:
urxvt --perl-lib $HOME -pe grab
It works as it should; It echos whatever I highlight in the new terminal on the old terminal.
The next step was to make a basic launcher. I thought something like this would work:
sub on_sel_grab {
system("firefox http://www.google.com/search?q=", $_[0]->selection);
It doesn't, and other variations like '< $_[0]->selection' dont' work either. Static launchers do:
sub on_sel_grab {
system("firefox http://www.google.com/search?q=test");
For my first question, how do I get the value of $_[0]->selection appended to the search URL?
Last edited by skottish (2008-12-05 05:34:35)

Answer 1

Ok, first, add this line to the top of your script somewhere:
use URI::Escape;
It seems to be a standard module (I have it on my system by default). This will enable you to escape characters for URIs (yeah, I know the name is obvious).
Then update your sub as follows:
sub on_sel_grab {
# Load the selection into a variable, URI-escaping it first, so that the next command becomes clearer.
# "my" is just for the variable declaration so that you don't encounter any problems if you're using "strict"
my $selection = uri_escape($_[0]->selection);
# Add single quotes around the URI to avoid potential shell problems.
# The curly braces around the variable are just to be sure that it's read correctly.
# I don't think it's necessary here, but it's good practice when you're your variables aren't space-padded.
system("firefox 'http://www.google.com/search?q=${selection}');
# Is this necessary? Why is there here? I think you can remove this.
If you can't use "URI::Escape", you'll have to add several substitution lines (e.g. $selection =~ s/ /%20/g).
edit
I need to stop submitting replies that I've had open for 10 minutes.
edit 2
Try
pacman -S perl-libwww
I suspect that's the package providing the URI::Escape module.
Last edited by Xyne (2008-11-25 00:41:39)