gri6507 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Fellow Monks,

I post this question not because I don't want to do the work, but because I don't want to reinvent the wheel for the work that I would have to do.

My task is this: I need to parse out /etc/remote to find the device tag (i.e. dv=/dev/term/a) for a particular handle. The problem is that sometimes the handle is listed only as a compatibility link (i.e. tc=sysa) and then I have to find the device tag for the sysa handle (or keep on recursing ad infinitum until a device tag is found). For example, having the following /etc/remote

MyPort:\
        :dv=/dev/term/b:br#9600:el=^C^S^Q^U^D:ie=%$:oe=^D:
sysa:\
        :dv=/dev/term/a:br#9600:el=^C^S^Q^U^D:ie=%$:oe=^D:
MyAlias:tc=sysa

[download]

the device for 'MyPort' is /dev/term/b, and the device for 'MyAlias' is /dev/term/a.

Does anyone know if something like this exists? It seems like I would be reinventing the wheel if I rolled my own code. Thanks.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Parsing /etc/remote
by merlyn (Sage) on Nov 29, 2005 at 14:59 UTC
[reply]
      Thanks merlyn, it seems to almost work.
      use strict;
use warnings;
use English;
use Term::Cap;

my $PortName = 'MyPort';
if (scalar(@ARGV)) {
  $PortName = $ARGV[0];
}

$ENV{TERMPATH} = '/etc/remote';
my $terminal = Tgetent Term::Cap { TERM => $PortName, OSPEED => 9600};
print $terminal->Tgoto('dv', "", "",);

      [download]

      So, when called with MyPort parameter, it gives me /dev/term/b as expected. However, when called with MyAlias parameter, it does not return anything (but no errors either). What am I missing?

[reply]
[d/l]
        Although it doesn't seem to be required by the file format in the examples and man pages I've looked at, if the end of the alias line is terminated with a colon it will work as expected.
[reply]

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