ISELECT(1) General Commands Manual ISELECT(1)

iSelect — Interactive Selection Tool

iselect [-d beg,end] [-cfae] [-p linenum] [-k key[:okey]] [-m] [-n name] [-t title] [-SKP] [-Q fallback] line…

iselect [-d beg,end] [-cfae] [-p linenum] [-k key[:okey]] [-m] [-n name] [-t title] [-SKP] [-Q fallback] < lines

iselect -V|-h

iSelect is an interactive line selection tool, operating via a full-screen Curses-based terminal session. It can be used either as a user interface frontend controlled by the shell, Perl, or another type of script backend as its wrapper, or in batch as a pipe filter (usually between grep and the final executing command). In other words: iSelect was designed to be used for any type of interactive line-based selection.

If no arguments are given, lines are read from the standard input stream. Otherwise, lines are used directly.

Each selectable line is fully bold; parts of other lines may be set in bold by wrapping them in ‘<b>...</b>’.

By default, a single line may be chosen; with -m multiple lines can be selected. By default, only lines containing the tag ‘<s>’ (or with different delimiters set with -d) may be selected. -a allows selecting all lines, but the tag is always removed. Selected lines are written to the standard output stream

The tag has a variant that looks like ‘<s:result text>’, which, instead of writing the line itself, writes result text. Every format specifier in the form ‘%[prompt string]s’ or ‘%[prompt string]S’ in the output is replaced by a line entered in an interactive prompt. The variant allows empty responses; S doesn't.

beg,end, --delimiter=beg,end
Sets the delimiters for the selection tags. The default is and — the selection tags have to read ‘<s>’ and ‘<s:result text>’.
, --strip-comments
Discard input lines starting with ‘#’.
, --force-browse
Open the full-screen browser even if input contains less than < lines. This may happen anyway if a ‘%[prompt]s’ needs to be substituted.
, --all-select
Force all lines to be selectable. ‘<s>’ tags are still removed.
, --exit-no-select
Exit immediately if no lines are selectable.

, --position=linenum
Sets the cursor position to 1-based linenumber.
, --key=key:okey
Maps key to okey. Both may be either a printable character or one of SPACE, RETURN, (↑), (↓), (←), KEY_RIGHT (→), (PgUp), (PgDn). This can be given any number of times, and is applied in order.
, --key=key
Same as -k key:RETURN. For example, -k f allows using ‘f’ to confirm the selection.
, --multi-line
Allow selecting more than one line with Space.
, --name=name
Changes the string displayed flush left at the bottom of the browser window from "iSelect".
, --title=title
Sets the file ..., displayed centered at the bottom of the browser window.

, --strip-result
Strip all leading and trailing whitespace from the result string.
, --key-result
Prefix each result with the key used to confirm the selection. This is usually "RETURN" or "KEY_RIGHT", but in the presence of -k, this is the (unmapped) key; thus, with -k f, selecting line Foo Bar by pressing ‘f’ yields ‘f:Foo Bar’. A Space is rendered as a literal space, not as "SPACE".
, --position-result
Prefix each result with its 1-based line number in the buffer.
, --quit-result=fallback
Write fallback to the standard output stream when quitting.

, --version
Write the version and licence information to the standard output stream, exit 0.
, --help
Write the usage string information to the standard error stream, exit 0.

Use these to browse through the selection list:

  CURSOR-UP ..... Move cursor one line up
  CURSOR-DOWN ... Move cursor one line down
  PAGE-UP ....... Move cursor one page up
  PAGE-DOWN ..... Move cursor one page down
  g ............. Goto first line
  G ............. Goto last line

Use these to select one line and exit in standard mode, or one or more lines in multi-line mode:

  RETURN ........ Select line and exit
  CURSOR-RIGHT .. Select line and exit
  SPACE ......... Select line and stay (multi-line mode only)
  C ............. Clear current marks  (multi-line mode only)

Use these to quit iSelect or to show the help or version pages:

  q ............. Quit (exit without selection)
  CURSOR-LEFT ... Quit (exit without selection)
  h ............. Help Page
  v ............. Version Page

The Curses session is always opened on /dev/tty, because the standard I/O streams are usually tied to pipes.

if a selection was made, a selection wasn't made, or succumbed to SIGINT or SIGTERM.
if an unknown [o]key was given or an I/O error occurred.

As an example we present a real-life situation where iSelect can enhance existing functionality. We define two shell functions (for your $HOME/.bashrc file) which enhance the shell's cd built-in.

#   database scan
cds () {
    find "$HOME" -type d | sort > ~/.dirs &
}

#   enhanced cd command
cd () {
    if [ -d "$1" ]; then
        builtin cd "$1"
    else
        builtin cd "$(grep -E "/$1[^/]*$" ~/.dirs   |
                      iselect -a -Q "$1" -n "chdir" \
                      -t "Change Directory to...")"
    fi
}

This cd() is compatible with the built-in in the case where the specified directory actually exists. When it doesn't, the original cd would immediately give an error (assuming CDPATH is not set). This version tries harder by searching for such a directory in a previously-built (via cds()) ($HOME/.dirs) file. When no match is found, iSelect just returns the given directory as the default result and cd fails as usual. When only one directory was found, iSelect gives it to cd silently. Only when more then one directory was found, iSelect shows a menu to pick between matches interactively. The chosen directory is then given to cd.

For more useful examples on how to use iSelect, see /usr/share/doc/iselect/examples.

Ralf S. Engelschall ⟨rse@engelschall.com⟩ (http://www.engelschall.com)

New iSelect Home

November 17, 2024 ossp-iselect 1.4.2