I have this idea - Copying between different terminal directories.

Question

Hi,
I have no idea if a program that does the following exists. The concept is a bit hard to explain but I'll do my best.
Lets say that you have to terminals opened. In terminal 1 you are currently working in ~/build/foobar and in terminal 2 you are working in ~/archiscool/foobar/letshaveadrink/ and you want to copy a file from ~/build/foobar to ~/archiscool/foobar/letshaveadrink. The usual way of doing this would be to type
"[user@host ~/build/foobar/]$ cp foobar ~/archiscool/foobar/letshaveadrink/"
and it is usually very quick to do with completion, but it would be much easier if one could build a script (lets call it "t2dir") that could identify the working dir of terminal 2. Then you'd only have to type
"[user@host~/build/foobar/]$ cp foobar t2dir".
Would it possible to probe terminals for their working directories?
Last edited by Ashren (2008-04-17 09:47:00)

Answer 1

Here's an alternative: use `ls /dev/pts` to get a list of running ttys and present that list to the user and let them choose the destination. That way they won't have to know the "/dev/pts" number of the tty they want to copy to. It will be nice to people who use title-bar-less windows (like me).
#!/bin/sh
# Find out the PIDS of running ttys
PIDS=""
for PTS in $(ls /dev/pts); do
#echo "$PTS"
PID=$(pgrep -nt "pts/$PTS")
#echo "$PID"
if [ $PID != $$ ]; then
PIDS="$PIDS $PID"
fi
done
# Count the PIDS
i=0
for PID in $PIDS; do
i=$(($i + 1))
done
# Behave differently based on number of available destinations
case $i in
0)
echo "No other tty to copy to. Ignoring."
exit 1
1)
DEST=$(pwdx $PIDS)
#echo "$DEST"
echo "Only one possible destination. Copying to $DEST."
exit $(cp "$1" "$DEST")
*) # Many destinations
j=0
for PID in $PIDS; do
j=$(($j + 1))
echo "$j. $(pwdx $PID | sed -r -e's/^[0-9]+: //')"
done
echo "Select destination by entering its number (1, 2, etc.): "
read NUM
if [ $NUM -lt 1 ]; then
echo "Error: there is no number smaller than 1 in the list."
exit 2
elif [ $NUM -gt $j ]; then
echo "Error: there is no number greater than $j in the list."
exit 3
elif [ $NUM -gt 0 ] && [ $NUM -le $j ]; then
k=1
for PID in $PIDS; do
if [ $k -eq $NUM ]; then
DEST="$(pwdx $PID | sed -r -e's/^[0-9]+: //')"
exit $(cp "$1" "$DEST")
fi
k=$(($k + 1))
done
else
echo "Error: cannot understand what you wrote."
exit 4
fi
esac
When in sh, I'm paranoid about spaces and metacharacters and globs and I don't know how to use arrays. I guess this explains the weird structure of the script.
It sucks that it doesn't check for duplicates when listing out possible destinations... I should write this in a more comfortable language like perl. But I should go do some real work now.
Last edited by peets (2008-04-18 14:39:04)