Good Day.
I am a hobby programmer, and am just looking for creative ways to get things done.
In particular, closing a tab or tabs in sublimetext3 through a cmd line method.
The even cooler thing would be, if so, is there a way to decide in cmd which tab to close e.g. 3rd from left/right etc?
In keeping with the idea that this is mostly curiosity and preference than anything else, so creative replies are definitely appreciated as well.
You can execute any command* from the command line, so this is very much possible.
For example, to close the active tab of the most recently used Sublime Text window, you can run subl --command close.
To close a specific tab, for example the 18th tab, which will have index 17 because it is zero-based:
subl --command 'close_by_index {"group": 0, "index": 17}'
(This is assuming bash syntax - for Windows cmd syntax, you may need to do some creative escaping because the command arguments have to be valid JSON and quoted as part of the same argument as the name of the command you want to execute.)
This is exactly the same command that would be run when right-clicking on the tab and picking Close Tab in the context menu. This command can be seen by inspecting Packages/Default/Tab Context.sublime-menu using the built-in View Package File functionality in the Command Palette. You can check this file to see other pre-defined entries like closing all other tabs, or tabs to the right etc.
*: Caveats being if ST is not already running, then it tries to run the command before plugins are loaded.
Related
Assume I want to invoke a tool with a lot of options, like:
$ somescript --option1 --option2 --option3 --option4 --option5 whatever even more stuff
But the width of the terminal doesn't allow to have that thing on a "single line".
That alone isn't a problem, but with fish, there is a problem with scrolling.
When I enter that extra-wide command, at some point, there will be a line break:
$ somescript --option1 --option2 --option3 --option4 --option5
whatever even more stuff
All fine so far. While typing such a lengthy command, I can scroll forth and back at any point. Works as expected. So, assume I entered the command, made a mistake, and now want to remove --option4.
The normal thing: use "arrow up" to get to that command in the history, to then use "arrow left" to scroll within the command. And now something weird happens.
Everything is fine while the cursor is within the second line. But when the cursor moves to the first line ... after 3 to 5 more "arrow left" strokes, the cursor moves UP another line. Then it sits above the first line of the command. There is also a vertical jump of a few characters.
In other words: as soon as a command is longer than the width of the terminal, I am unable to scroll into the first line reliably. The cursor shows up somewhere, and it is really hard to guess where it really sits at any moment. Which makes it almost impossible to edit anything in that first line.
This is on MacOs, using iterm 3.2.9 and fish version 3.0.2 installed via brew.
Wrote up defect 6014 on github. Outcome is rather frustrating.
The problem is: the Mac terminal(s) all handle certain unicode characters the wrong way. "Normally" that isn't a problem, but when you use one of those fish prompts that give you the git status (like AcidHub which is my favorite) ... fish can't compute/determine the exact line width, and there you go.
So, basically, when using fish on MacOs, option space is limited to:
use the defaults, which (when using special prompts, like AcidHub will lead to scrolling issues)
adapt the fish prompt accordingly (in my case, I replaced all special unicode chars with something simpler). It doesn't look that great, but scrolling simply works again.
And a completely different and unexpected solution to the problem: I am using iterm2 on my Mac, and iterm2 just added a "status bar" section. That can be easily configured, and of course, it already has a status bar component that tells you about git status.
Thus my solution: I changed the fish prompt to just give the PWD, and all the other things that the AcidHub prompt has to offer, are now "iterm2 status bar" components!
I use the plugin SimpleSession with Sublime Text 3 (but any plugin could be considered). If I save a session with multiple windows, this creates a .simplesession file. How can I open that session file just by clicking on the file? The goal is to avoid having to launch ST3 and use the Command Palette to run the "Load Session" command. Currently, clicking on the .simplesession file causes ST3 to open it as a regular file.
Sublime doesn't know that a simplesession file is important in any way, so double clicking on one is going to open it the same as Sublime would open any other file.
Since it's a plugin that created the file, that plugin is the only thing that knows that it's special and what to do with it. So what you really need is the way to tell the plugin to take the action for you.
All actions in Sublime (including things as simple as inserting text) are taken by executing a command. Here that would be a command in the plugin that created the file in question, which would tell it that you want to carry out the action you would normally take manually, such as loading a session.
To do that from within Sublime you'd do something like bind a keyboard key to the appropriate command, add it to a menu, the command palette, etc. If you want to take the action from outside of Sublime, then you need to communicate that command to Sublime in order to get it to execute.
In core Sublime you can do this by executing the subl program that ships with Sublime and tell it a plugin command that you would like to execute.
Although it's possible to do this, the solution provided here has the requirement that Sublime already be running due to technical limitations within Sublime itself, but more on that in a moment.
This answer will give you the information that you need to formulate the command line that you need to execute in order to get the plugin command to run and carry out the action that you desire.
If you want to run this command in response to double clicking a file of a particular type (here a simplesession file), how you do that is specific to the operating system and file browser that you're using, and is best asked as a separate question.
Assuming you instead want a level of integration where you just have a desktop shortcut, start menu entry, etc that does this, this is more straight forward because such a shortcut is really just a visual wrapper that executes a command of your choosing.
Again, how you would do that is different depending on your OS, but the important part is knowing what full command line you need to give to the shortcut to be able to run it, which is what this answer tells you how to construct.
Important Note: The specific package in your question implements a load_session command, which prompts you for the session to load from a list of sessions you've previously created.
This command doesn't take any argument that would tell it what session to load without asking you to pick one first. As a result, what you want isn't technically possible without more work because there's no way to directly tell the load_session command the file that you want to open.
In order to more fully automate things in this particular case, the underlying package needs to be modified. In particular either the load_session command would need an optional argument which, when given, would cause it to load that session without prompting first, or
a new command would need to be created to do the same thing.
If you're not comfortable or knowledgeable enough to make such modifications to the package directly, you need to either find someone that will do that for you or (even better) discuss it with the package author, since that is a feature that others would probably enjoy as well.
The first thing you need to know is, "What command in the plugin is the one that I need to execute to do what I want?". In some cases you may already know exactly what command you need to use because it's documented, or you have already made a custom key binding for it, and so on.
If you don't know the command you need to use, check the documentation on the package (if any) to see if it mentions them. In your particular case, the README on the package page specifically mentions a list of commands, of which load_session seems like the most appropriate fit.
Lacking any documentation, the next easiest thing to do would be to ask Sublime directly. To do this, select View > Show Console from the menu or press the keyboard shortcut associated with it, Ctrl+`. In the console that appears, enter the following command and press enter.
sublime.log_commands(True)
Now whenever you do anything, this console is going to show you exactly what command Sublime is executing, along with any arguments that it may be passing to the command. This remains in effect until you use the same command with False or restart Sublime.
With logging turned on, select the appropriate command from the command palette and see what the Console says.
For example, with this package installed, I get output like the following:
>>> sublime.log_commands(True)
command: show_overlay {"overlay": "command_palette"}
command: load_session
This is showing two commands; first I opened the command palette which uses the show_overlay command, and then I selected the SimpleSession: Load command, which is the load_session command with no arguments.
In order to get Sublime to execute the command from the command line, you use the --command command line argument to subl. So in order to get Sublime to run the load_session command, you can enter the following command in a command prompt/terminal in your OS. This is also the command you would set in your desktop shortcut.
subl --command "load_session"
This presumes that you've set up Sublime so that it's in the path (how you do that is OS specific). If running subl in a terminal gives you an error about a missing command, either add the Sublime install directory to the path or use a fully qualified file name in place of subl (e,g. "C:\Program Files\Sublime Text 3\subl" if you're on Windows); either requires you to know what location Sublime is installed in.
If you want to use a command that takes arguments you need to include the arguments in the command as well, in the same way as they were displayed in the console above.
It's important that the command name and the arguments all be considered one command line argument, which requires you to wrap the whole thing in quote characters, since otherwise the spaces will make it appear as multiple arguments.
If you forget this, Sublime will respond by opening files named after the different parts of the command and arguments that you tried to open under the mistaken belief that you're giving it files to open.
As a concrete example, to get Sublime to open the command palette from outside of Sublime, the command to do this would look like the following if you were on Linux/MacOS:
subl --command 'show_overlay {"overlay": "command_palette"}'
Note again that we are passing exactly what the console showed above, but the whole thing, command and arguments, are wrapped in single quotes so that the terminal knows that the entire value is one argument.
This makes things a little tricky on Windows, which doesn't allow single quotes. On that platform you need to use double quotes instead. This requires you to "quote" the internal double quotes with a leading \ character so that the command processor knows that they're part of the argument and not the double quote that ends the argument.
For the case of opening the command palette on Windows, the command thus looks like this:
subl --command "show_overlay {\"overlay\": \"command_palette\"}"
With this information in hand, you can set up something like a desktop shortcut to run the appropriate command, or potentially set up the file explorer that you're using to execute a command specifically when you double click on a file of your choosing.
Again, how you would do that is specific to the operating system that you're using, and so I'm not really covering that in depth here in this answer. Just keep in mind that regardless of the OS in question, the part that remains the same is that you need to use subl command like the above.
Now, in your particular case, if the package that you're using provided a command that would let it load the session directly without prompting you first, the command that you use would need to also include the name of the session file as one of the command arguments.
However, as I mentioned above, this package doesn't currently allow that at the moment.
Now, here is the GIANT CAVEAT with this whole thing; this only works if Sublime is already running.
The subl command talks to an existing running copy of Sublime and gives it commands to open a file, directory, run a command as we're doing here, and so on. If Sublime isn't already running, then subl will start Sublime first and then communicate these details to it.
Sublime starts and makes it's interface available to you to work right away, and then starts to load packages and plugins in the background. This is to get you in and working on your files without having to wait for all packages to load first.
An issue with this is that as soon as Sublime starts, subl passes off the appropriate commands and then quits, and since packages aren't loaded yet, the command that you want to execute doesn't exist yet (hasn't been loaded), so nothing actually happens.
Unfortunately there's not really a satisfactory way around this particular issue if you want to start Sublime and also execute commands.
A potential workaround would be use something like a script or batch file that would check to see if Sublime is already running, and if not Start it and delay a little bit to allow plugins to finish loading, then use subl to run the command.
However this would require you to basically guess how long it takes Sublime to finish loading, which is less than ideal.
I know subl myfile.txt:5 would open “myfile.txt” on line 5. I however want to be able to, from the command line, open a file with say lines 5,9,15 highlighted or selected. I know adding –command should enable me to do that, but how? What would the command be?
There's no built-in command that I know of that can do this, but one can easily create one.
(Technically, it could be done using the bookmarks functionality from the Default package, and the built-in "Expand Selection to Line" functionality. However, experience shows that it would be better and more reliable to write a command in ST specifically for this purpose.)
In ST:
from the Tools menu -> Developer -> New Plugin...
select all and replace with the following
import sublime
import sublime_plugin
class SelectSpecificLinesCommand(sublime_plugin.TextCommand):
def run(self, edit, lines):
self.view.sel().clear()
for line in lines:
position = self.view.text_point(int(line) - 1, 0) # internally, line numbers start from 0
self.view.sel().add(self.view.line(position))
save it, in the folder ST recommends (Packages/User/) as something like select_lines.py (file extension is important).
subl myfile.txt
subl --command "select_specific_lines { \"lines\": [5, 9, 15] }" (this style of escaping the quotes for JSON strings works from the Windows Command Prompt and Linux's Bash)
Why did I specify the command on a separate line / call to subl? Because of these 2 caveats:
ST must already be running, otherwise commands specified on the command line may not get executed, because the plugins haven't loaded yet.
the command could get executed before the file is loaded.
Arguably, point 2 could still happen with multiple invocations of subl, but hopefully it is less likely. There is an open issue on the ST bug tracker for better command line command handling: https://github.com/SublimeTextIssues/Core/issues/1457.
This is weird.
I know tab is for command completion in the PowerShell ISE and fine so. But, it also messes up the editing pane.
Do this:
File > New (Untitled1.ps1 opens)
Press tab (all fine, you get an indent)
type enter, # (comment) and press tab after it
expected: one would get indentation after the hash
actual: one gets the hash replaced by $PSVersionTable or whatever the command prompt has in its history! (tab and Shift-tab circle through those)
Does this mean no-one uses tabs within comments in PowerShell scripts, or that no-one uses comments in PowerShell scripts?
Can I turn off this behavior anywhere?
Also, the behavior seems to be inconsistent. If I e.g. type ##, sometimes tab does not do the completion (it does not enter a tab either).
Can others reproduce this?
System:
Windows 8.1 Pro
PowerShell ISE
To answer the main question, you can enter Alt+09 (using numeric keypad) to enter <Tab>.
For the behavior described, I see this as expected behavior. You can get history completion by typing # and part of a previous command then pressing Tab repeatedly will cycle backwards through matching history. Typing # alone will match all history starting with the last command.
Does this mean no-one uses tabs within comments in PowerShell scripts?
Anecdotal, but I've never used tabs in a single line comment, but I do often use tabs within multiline comments which are bracketed by <# and #>. E.g.
<#
Functions
Get-Foo
Get-Bar
Variables
$Foo
$Bar
#>
Function Get-Foo { ...
With multiline comments, the auto-completion will not be an issue.
, or that no-one uses comments in PowerShell scripts?
I don't know why this would be implied by the behavior; I always use a single space to start a line comment.
I find this helpful when developing a script as I often try expressions in the command pane if I'm unsure of the behavior, then add the expression to the script if it works.
So, my workflow would be:
Ctrl-D to go to the Command Pane
Type a command
If the command did what I wanted, Ctrl-I to go to the Script Pane
Type #<Tab>, and the line is added to the script.
I'm using zsh in OS X Terminal.app and for quite a while, I've been longing for a way to jump back and forth between prev/next prompts in the terminal's output.
One convenience with this would be to be able to review (and track errors at) the end of each command's output; eg. when you building stuff from source with ./configure; make; make install. Note: I'm obviously not referring to jumping back and forth in the command-history, but for a way to take a peek at the endings of each command's output.
Has anyone heard of such functionality in the *nix (preferrably also Mac) world? Would it require some sort of OS-centric Terminal plugin, or can it be programmatically done via a shell script which can be tied to a keyboard shortcut? Maybe I'm the only one thinking about this? :)
Edit: Here's an example scenario: Let's say I want to compile and install some program (using standard ./configure && make && make install procedure) and after the make command, I run into some errors. Now, the way I understand it (I may be completely wrong), the crucial error causing the make command to fail usually shows up in the last line(s) in the output, no? Anyway, at this point, I might do something like cat INSTALL to read up on the INSTALL document to check whether there's something I've missed. NOW, if I want to go back to see what the error was, that caused my initial make command to fail, I then have to manually scroll up to that position again, since my cat INSTALL command printed a ton of text after it.
I don't know if this scenario is the most elucidative – but there are many other situations where I wish I could just "jump" back to previous prompt lines and check up on previous command output; whether it was a simple ls command, make, git status, or whatever it was – swapping positions in the window by means of using prompt lines as "bookmark" positions seems an interesting idea to me.
command + left or right goes between tabs in iterm. is this what you are asking?
Emacs has a shell-mode that runs a shell inside the Emacs editor, providing a rich environment of additional commands for navigating and working with shell commands. This includes commands for going to the previous/next prompt, and deleting the output from commands so you can "clean up" and issue another command.
If you aren't familiar with Emacs: to start a shell inside Emacs, run emacs from the shell, then type Esc-x (or Meta-x, if you have "Use option as meta key" enabled in Terminal > Preferences > Settings > [profile] > Keyboard). This will ask for a command to execute. Enter shell.
To see a list of commands you can use in Shell Mode, enter Control-h m. Here are the ones for moving the cursor to the previous/next prompt:
C-c C-n comint-next-prompt
C-c C-p comint-previous-prompt
These commands would also be useful:
C-c C-r comint-show-output
C-c C-o comint-delete-output