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AbstProcDo
Asked: 2018-04-14 21:38:58 +0800 CST

Where can I find documentation for readline?

  • 772

The read builtin command has -e option

-e  Use Readline to handle input. This permits input editing in the same
    manner as the command line.

What's Readline in the specification:

$ man readline
No manual entry for readline
$ man Readline
No manual entry for Readline

There are no details of readline.

bash

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    See man bash, which has an entire section on Readline:

    READLINE
   This  is  the  library  that  handles  reading  input  when  using   an
   interactive  shell,  unless  the  --noediting  option is given at shell
   invocation.  Line editing is also used when using the -e option to  the
   read  builtin.

    GNU Readline is a library that's developed alongside bash, but is used by a number of other programs to provide better interactive command-line usage (for example, Python's REPL loop). It can be configured using ~/.inputrc or /etc/inputrc. See the readline site for more details.

    • 10

  2. To jump directly to the READLINE section of the bash man page, I define the following alias in my $HOME/.bash_aliases file.

    alias man-readline="man -P 'less -p ^READLINE' bash"
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  3. Use man 3 readline for man page for Readline.

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  4. Use info rluserman for the complete manual, with interactive links.

    Hit H and the bottom half of the screen will display a list of commands you can use to find what you need. Such as [ and ] to go through the nodes in rluserman. Or try to find something specific by starting a search, for example:

    Suppose you were looking for the vi-editing-mode;

    1. hit / to start a search
    2. type your query, e.g. vi, and confirm by hitting Enter
    3. use { and } to go back and forth through the occurrences in the manual.

    (PS. vi\W', would be better because this would rule out hits like 'provided')

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