.TH DISLOCATE 1 "7 October 1993"
.SH NAME
Dislocate \- disconnect and reconnect processes
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B dislocate
[
.I program args...
]
.SH INTRODUCTION
.B Dislocate
allows processes to be disconnected and reconnected to the terminal.
Possible uses:
.RS
.TP 4
\(bu
You can disconnect a process from a terminal at work
and reconnect from home, to continue working.
.TP 4
\(bu
After having your line be dropped due to noise, you can get back to your
process without having to restart it from scratch.
.TP 4
\(bu
If you have a problem that you would like to show someone, you can set
up the scenario at your own terminal, disconnect, walk down the hall,
and reconnect on another terminal.
.TP 4
\(bu
If you are in the middle of a great game (or whatever) that does not allow
you to save, and someone else kicks you off the terminal, you can disconnect,
and reconnect later.
.SH USAGE
When run with no arguments,
.B Dislocate
tells you about your disconnected processes and lets you reconnect to one.
Otherwise,
.B Dislocate
runs the named program along with any arguments.
By default, ^] is an escape that lets you talk to
.B Dislocate
itself. At that point, you can disconnect (by pressing ^D) or
suspend
.B Dislocate
(by pressing ^Z).
Any Tcl or Expect command is also acceptable at this point.
For example,
to insert the contents of a the file /etc/motd as if you had typed it, say:
.nf
send -i $out [exec cat /etc/motd]
.fi
To send the numbers 1 to 100 in response to the prompt "next #", say:
.nf
for {set i 0} {$i<100} {incr i} {
expect -i $in "next #"
send -i $out "$i\r"
}
.fi
Scripts can also be prepared and sourced in so that you don't have to
type them on the spot.
.B Dislocate
is actually just a simple
.B Expect
script. Feel free to make it do what you want it to do or just
use
.B Expect
directly, without going through
.BR Dislocate .
.B Dislocate
understands a few special arguments. These should appear before any program
name. Each should be separated by whitespace. If the arguments themselves
takes arguments, these should also be separated by whitespace.
.PP
The
.B \-escape
flag sets the escape to whatever follows. The default escape is ^].
.PP
.SH CAVEATS
This program was written by the author as an exercise to show that
communicating with disconnected processes is easy. There are
many features that could be added, but that is not the intent of this
program.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR Tcl (3),
.BR libexpect (3)
.br
.I
"Exploring Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs"
\fRby Don Libes,
O'Reilly and Associates, January 1995.
.SH AUTHOR
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology