Re: [xmonad] XMonad.Prompt.File (attached)

Gwern Branwen writes:

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 10:45 PM, John J Foerch wrote:

...

I had need in my config for a filename prompt.  XMonad-Contrib contains XMonad.Prompt.Directory, so I just copied it and made the appropriate substitutions to make XMonad.Prompt.File.  It would be great if this could be added to xmonad-contrib so it will be there for the next person who needs this functionality.

Well, as you say, it's basically just a copy-paste with one small change:

36,38c36,38 < getFileCompl :: String -> IO [String] < getFileCompl s = (filter notboring . lines) `fmap` < runProcessWithInput "/bin/bash" [] ("compgen -A file " ++ s ++ "\n") ---

...

getDirCompl :: String -> IO [String] getDirCompl s = (filter notboring . lines) `fmap` runProcessWithInput "/bin/bash" [] ("compgen -A directory " ++ s ++ "\n")

As it stands, I would be adamantly against inclusion; such copy-paste is not the Haskell way. Surely there is a better approach? I can't help but suspect that this functionality may already be supplied by another module (perhaps the Shell prompt meets your needs).

Sorry it couldn't be a more profound, creative, and interesting module :D but that's what I needed. Shell prompt does not fit the bill for two reasons: 1) its prompt string is hard-coded as "Run: ", and 2) I wanted expansion of '~/' but not other special characters, so I have to manipulate the return value before passing it on to spawn. For context, I'm using this in several screenshot commands which prompt for the name of the output file. Maybe there is a better approach for prompting for directories and files both, but the existence of an XMonad.Prompt.Directory and no XMonad.Prompt.File looks to me like a simple omission. If the latter is a hack, then so is the former, but I'm not campaigning for any outcome, only offering something that I have found useful to others. Have a nice day! -- John Foerch