Solved How to print a variable on STDOUT while still have the hand

[gotnull]

Hello,

Is it possible to display a variable on STDOUT and keep the hand in order to use/edit it ?
I've tried to remove the carriage return or newline with tr , or changing IFS but that didn't work.
So after few hours on this I just wonder if it is possible, if yes what command/tool can do that ?

It is probably not well explained so to illustrate what I would like to do in the following example just pretend the cursor is represented by "__"

normal:

$ echo foo 
$ foo 
$ __

expected:

$ echo foo 
$ foo __

Thank you.

 

[yuripv79]

portable:

printf "foo"

non-portable:

echo -n "foo"

 

[gotnull]

Humm I am not sure I've already tried this.
echo -n just remove the newline but you won't have the hand after that.

Still using "__" to illustrate the cursor :

~ : echo -n "foo"                                        
foo~ : __

 

[yuripv79]

I don't understand what you mean then, sorry.

 

[covacat]

he wants the var back in his input
like tiocsti or something

 

[gotnull]

I don't understand what you mean then, sorry.

No problem, I had some hard time trying to figure out how I can explain it to people, I suppose I didn't express myself well enough.
That's why I choose to put an example to show what I want, I thought it could be better to understand than my poor explanation, but apparently it's not ^^

he wants the var back in his input

Well that's probably the correct way to explain it. thanks.

 

[covacat]

import fcntl
import sys
import termios
for c in sys.argv[1]:
        fcntl.ioctl(sys.stdin, termios.TIOCSTI, c)

python3.9 tiocsti.py something_here

 

[gotnull]

Thanks but would it be possible to achieve it in shell sh instead or is it a too complicated task to be done in shell?
I don't ask necessarily people to do it for me, just put me in the right direction is also good enough.

 

[covacat]

i don't think its possible to do it without an external command (ie with a shell built in function)
so you need an external command
and then in the shell or shell script you use it
save the python script in your path, add a shebang line, make it executable and use it like
stuffinput $VAR

 

[Charlie_]

$ echo foo >>~/.sh_history
$ exec sh

foo can be called in history.

 

[gpw928]

I'm struggling to understand exactly what you mean by "keep in hand". If you know the value of the shell variable you display on STDOUT, then you can re-use it at will, or you can infer a default. Here is portable Bourne shell code to achieve a similar (and very common) outcome to what (I think) you want:

# Implement BSD "echo -n"
case `echo -n` in
    -*) Echon() { echo ${1:+"$@"}"\c"; };;
    *)  Echon() { echo -n ${1:+"$@"}; };;
esac
DefaultAnswer="Y"
Echon "Do you wish to proceed [$DefaultAnswer/n]? "
read Answer
[ -z "$Answer" ] && Answer="$DefaultAnswer"
Answer=$(echo $Answer | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]')
echo "The answer (in lower case) is $Answer"

 

[Jose]

Do you want something like this?

#!/bin/sh
for pc in $(seq 1 100); do
    printf "[%6.2f%%]\r" $((pc))
    sleep 1
done

 

[gotnull]

i don't think its possible to do it without an external command (ie with a shell built in function)
so you need an external command

It looks a lot like it.
Found a solution implying external tools like you said (xdotool+xclip) .
Thank you for the term "tiocsti", starting with it I found my way around it, but in vain because in the end it doesn't really help me the way I thought it would, obviously my approach wasn't good from the beginning but at least I learned something.


Jose , yuripv79 , Charlie_ , gpw928
Sorry if my question was not clear, next time I will try to rephrase it.

if you still don't get it, it appears that what I wanted to do can be done via tmux.
launch tmux
$ tmux

then inside tmux enter:
$ stty -echo; tmux send-keys the_text ; stty echo
the result is : the prompt, the string the_text, and the waiting cursor

Anyway I switched to something else for now, the case is closed for me.

Thank you guys for your help.