repl-edit

Use your text editor to edit commands in Node's repl.

(tip o' the hat to Giles Bowkett for inspiration)

Installation

npm install repl-edit

Usage

You can fire up a repl with editing capabilities by running node-repl-edit.

(It would be nice to extend an existing repl session but that's not possible with Node's repl module right now.)

Commands

edit

The first time you run edit() in a repl a temporary file is created, specific to that session, and opened in your editor. Type away and then save and close the file when you're done. The file is loaded and executed immediately.

run

To run whatever command you've been working on without editing it again type run().

setEditor

setEditor('mate -w') changes your editor to TextMate for this session. Note that this command sets the environment variable EDITOR for the repl process.

stash

stash('/path/to/a/file') saves your command to the named file.

unstash

unstash('/path/to/a/file') restores the contents of that file for you to run and/or edit.

Future

Instead of polluting the global namespace with functions I'd rather extend Node's repl to allow user-defined dot commands (just like .break and .clear), and then use that capability to provide commands like .edit and .stash <filename>.

The first time edit() is run in a repl instead of an empty file the command should be seeded with the last command that was executed.

If the native repl module exports the currently running repl object it will be possible to attach to an existing repl instead of having to run a separate binary that loads a repl.

License

Copyright 2010 Sami Samhuri sami@samhuri.net

MIT (see the file named LICENSE)