man > DISLOCATE(1)

DISLOCATE(1)                           General Commands Manual                          DISLOCATE(1)

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 sce‐
                  nario at your own terminal, disconnect, walk down the hall, and reconnect  on  an‐
                  other 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  recon‐
                  nect 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 con‐
       tents 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  sepa‐
       rated by whitespace.  If the arguments themselves takes arguments, these should also be sepa‐
       rated 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 discon‐
       nected  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)