User Commands enhance(1)
NAME
enhance - enhanced command-line editing facilities
SYNOPSIS
enhance command [argument]...
DESCRIPTION
The enhance program provides enhanced command-line editing
facilities to users of third party applications, to which one doesn't have any source code. It does this by placing apseudo-terminal between the application and the real termi-
nal. It uses the tecla command-line editing library to read
input from the real terminal, then forwards each just com-
pleted input line to the application via the pseudo-
terminal. All output from the application is forwarded back unchanged to the real terminal. Whenever the application stops generating output for morethan a tenth of a second, the enhance program treats the
latest incomplete output line as the prompt, and re-displays
any incompleted input line that the user has typed after it. The small delay, which is imperceptible to the user, isn't necessary for correct operation of the program. It is just an optimization, designed to stop the input line from beingre-displayed so often that it slows down output.
The user-level command-line editing facilities provided by
the Tecla library are documented in the tecla(5) man page DEFICIENCIES The one major problem that hasn't been solved yet, is how to deal with applications that change whether typed input is echo'd by their controlling terminal. For example, programs that ask for a password, such as ftp and telnet, temporarily tell their controlling terminal not to echo what the user types. Since this request goes to the application side ofthe pseudo terminal, the enhance program has no way of know-
ing that this has happened, and continues to echo typed input to its controlling terminal, while the user types their password. Furthermore, before executing the host application, theenhance program initially sets the pseudo terminal to noecho
mode, so that everything that it sends to the program doesn't get redundantly echoed. If a program that switches to noecho mode explicitly restores echoing afterwards,rather than restoring the terminal modes that were previ-
ously in force, then subsequently, every time that you enterSunOS 5.11 Last change: 18 May 2004 1
User Commands enhance(1)
a new input line, a duplicate copy will be displayed on the next line. FILES /usr/lib/libtecla.so tecla library ~/.teclarc tecla personal customization file.ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri-
butes:________________________________________________________________
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
|_____________________________|_________________________________|
| Availability | system/extended-system-utilities|
|_____________________________|_________________________________|
| Interface Stability | Committed ||_____________________________|_________________________________|
SEE ALSO
libtecla(3LIB), attributes(5), tecla(5)SunOS 5.11 Last change: 18 May 2004 2