something similar to Emacs shell?

Question

Hey guys, I'm looking for something similar to Emacs shell. I want to be able to select text easily in my terminal, be able to manipulate the output.

Unfortunately, emacs is not always an option. I can't figure out how to make a few things (e.g autocompletion) work the way it does in gnome-terminal and it is a bit of a pain on remote system.

I would rather not spend the time fixing/configuring Emacs unless there is a cool piece of software out there doing something similar to gnome-terminal + let's me manipulate the output without touching the bloody mouse.

Thanks for your help,

-hbt

Answer 1

You should try the Emacs terminal emulator term(or its colored version ansi-term). There are other terminal emulators for Emacs around, but this is the most popular(and the only one bundled with the default installation).

Answer 2

Looks like you want to look into readline on bash (or if available on your favourite shell). A quick google gives a few links here (including a cheatsheet).

Answer 3

I'm not sure I completely understand the question, but if you're looking for terminal emulation inside of Emacs, there are at least four options bundled with Emacs 22+ that offer varying levels of xterm-like capability:

• term
• ansi-term
• shell
• eshell

eshell, IMO, is the most departed from the tradtional "xterm" experience, but also offers the most buffer-like experience, and it is cross-platform, which is a huge win.

I think shell might be the sweet spot for you if you're looking for term-like behavior, while retaining the editing capabilities.

Finally, term and ansi-term are very term-like, and will behave almost exactly like a xterm/konsole/gnome-shell session.

One other note: if you want scrollback access, copying, pasting, etc. and you don't have Emacs available, I highly recommend learning and using GNU Screen.