User interaction
Shell vs command line
- Shell mode will read and interpret the command and arguments as provided by the user
- Command line mode (
alien.py command arg1 arg2 ..
) will first be interpreted by the shell
- Make sure to quote what is passed to alien.py:
alien.py ‘command arguments’
Features
- Command completion (with TAB) (command only)
- LFN completion: in special cases that are aware of lfn only arguments.
- N.B. subject to network latencies, each completion is a network query
- Command history saved to
${HOME}/.alienpy_history
- Default saving of last CWD
- Global value (racy between multiple parallel sessions)
- so, pay attention when using relative paths
- Disabled by env var
ALIENPY_NO_CWD_RESTORE
set to any value
- Shell mode prompt customizations (date and/or local cwd):
- In the current session with:
- Global settings of:
ALIENPY_PROMPT_DATE
and ALIENPY_PROMPT_CWD
- Chaining of commands by separator
;
- Piping the result of first AliEn-side command to the local shell.
- the first pipe will pass the result of left side to the right-side that is executed within local shell
- Aliases definition in
${HOME}/.alienpy_aliases
- Format:
tag=cmd1;cmd2;cmd3
- no logical operations between commands.
- Enable json output
- per session:
alien.py -json command
- per command:
alien.py command -json arg1 arg2 ..
HELP
- Either
help
or just ?
; it will list all known commands
- Optionally suffixed by command; it will call the command help.