NAME
Dislocate - disconnect and reconnect processes
SYNOPSIS
dislocate [ program args... ]
INTRODUCTION
Dislocate allows processes to be disconnected and reconnected to the
terminal. Possible uses:
· You can disconnect a process from a terminal at work and
reconnect from home, to continue working.
· 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 Dislocate itself. At
that point, you can disconnect (by pressing ^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 "next #"
send -i $out "$i\r"
}
Scripts can also be prepared and sourced in so that you don’t have to
type them on the spot.
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. 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.
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 Associates, January 1995.
AUTHOR
Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology
7 October 1993 DISLOCATE(1)