Dislocate - disconnect and reconnect processes
SYNOPSIS
dislocate [ program args... ]
INTRODUCTION
Dislocate allows processes to be disconnected and recon
nected to the terminal. Possible uses:
· You can disconnect a process from a terminal at
work and reconnect from home, to continue work
ing.
· After having your line be dropped due to noise,
you can get back to your process without having
to restart it from scratch.
· 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.
· 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.
USAGE
When run with no arguments, Dislocate tells you about your
disconnected processes and lets you reconnect to one.
Otherwise, Dislocate runs the named program along with any
arguments.
By default, ^] is an escape that lets you talk to Dislo
cate itself. At that point, you can disconnect (by press
ing ^D) or suspend 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:
send -i $out [exec cat /etc/motd]
To send the numbers 1 to 100 in response to the prompt
"next #", say:
for {set i 0} {$i<100} {incr i} {
expect -i $in "n"xt #"
send -i $out "$i
}
Scripts can also be prepared and sourced in so that you
Dislocate is actually just a simple Expect script. Feel
free to make it do what you want it to do or just use
Expect directly, without going through Dislocate. Dislo
cate understands a few special arguments. These should
appear before any program name. Each should be separated
by whitespace. If the arguments themselves takes argu
ments, these should also be separated by whitespace.
The -escape flag sets the escape to whatever follows. The
default escape is ^].
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.
SEE ALSO
Tcl(3), libexpect(3)
"Exploring Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating
Interactive Programs" by Don Libes, O'Reilly and Associ
ates, January 1995.
AUTHOR
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology
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