Re: Dumping terminal contents to a file

[vogelke+debian@pobox.com (Karl Vogel)]

>> On Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:52:05 -0400 (EDT), Alois Mahdal wrote:

A> I wonder if there's a simple and universal way to dump output of
A> terminal to a file, particularly for demonstration purposes.

>> On Wed, 8 Sep 2010 13:35:30 -0400 (EDT), Stephen Powell
>> <zlinuxman@wowway.com> said:

S> Well, for recording a shell session, there is "script".  And to play it
S> back later, there is "scriptreplay". [...]  I don't know if that's what
S> you want, though.  script puts *everything* in the capture file,
S> including linefeeds, backspaces, ANSI escape sequences, etc.  For
S> example, colorized output from "ls" results in ANSI escape sequences.

   I use a wrapper called "saveon" which tries to correct the worst results
   from "script" putting everything in the capture file:

      #!/bin/sh
      PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
      SAVEON=1
      export PATH SAVEON
      
      case "`whoami`" in
          root) prompt='root#' ;;
          *)    prompt='me%'   ;;
      esac
      
      export PS1="
      $prompt "
      
      tmp=`mktemp /tmp/$tag.XXXXXX` || {
          echo "$tag: mktemp failed" >&2; exit 1
      }
      trap "rm -f $tmp; exit 0" 0 1 2 3 15
      
      sedscr='
      s/^.*script-is-done://
      s/^.*script-started-on://
      /Script started on /d
      /^me% *$/d
      /^me% exit$/d
      /^root# *$/d
      '
      
      echo "script-started-on:`date '+%a %b %d %T %Y'`" > $tmp
      script -c /bin/sh -a -q $tmp
      echo "script-is-done:`date '+%a %b %d %T %Y'`" >> $tmp
      col -b < $tmp | sed -e "$sedscr" > typescript
      exit 0

   * The date commands give me a consistently-formatted start and finish
     time at the top and bottom of "typescript".

   * The newline in the prompt cleanly separates commands from output.

   * "col -b" gets rid of at least some special characters.

   * The SAVEON environment variable lets me set programs to show colors or
     mess with terminal settings only when it makes sense to do so.  For
     example, my "dir" script looks like this:

      #!/bin/sh
      case "$SAVEON" in
          "") opt='--color=auto' ;;
          *)  opt='' ;;
      esac
      unset BLOCK_SIZE             # throws off the results.
      exec ls -lF $opt ${1+"$@"}

-- 
Karl Vogel                      I don't speak for the USAF or my company

You do not need a parachute to skydive.  You only need a parachute to
skydive twice.