Extra Shell Features

The UESH shell provides more features than you can imagine!

In addition to all the base shell features that UESH contains, the following extra features can be used within the shell. Currently, the following features are supported:

Cancellation

You can control whether to allow or not to allow cancellation by using the two functions that do exactly the opposite of each other:

// To allow cancellation
CancellationHandlers.AllowCancel()

// To inhibit cancellation
CancellationHandlers.InhibitCancel()

The CancellationHandlers class can be found in the Nitrocid.Shell.ShellBase.Commands namespace.

If you call InhibitCancel(), it's no longer possible to use CTRL + C to cancel the current command. This is useful if the command is in the middle of an uninterruptible work or is in interaction with a native library.

When you've already inhibited the shell cancellation handler, if you call AllowCancel, then you can use CTRL + C to cancel the current command.

Wrapping

As indicated earlier in the command information page, if you enable the wrapping ability in the command flags (CommandFlags.Wrappable) for your command, you can use the wrap command against your command to be able to see the details of the output of the command without having to scroll (as in Windows).

For example, jsonbeautify has been defined with the wrappable flag so that you can use the wrap command with it.

{ "jsonbeautify",
    new CommandInfo("jsonbeautify", /* Localizable */ "Beautifies the JSON file",
        [
            new CommandArgumentInfo(
            [
                new CommandArgumentPart(true, "jsonfile"),
                new CommandArgumentPart(true, "output"),
            ], [], true)
        ], new JsonBeautifyCommand(), CommandFlags.RedirectionSupported | CommandFlags.Wrappable)
},

If your entire screen has been filled and the output isn't done yet, you can use the following controls to be able to control the position:

Key	Action
Escape	Bails from the wrapped output viewer
Page Up	Scrolls to the previous page
Home	Scrolls to the first page
End	Scrolls to the last page
Any key	Scrolls to the next page

Aliasing

Additionally, the UESH shell provides you with facility to make aliasing long commands easier than before. The alias management class, AliasManager, allows you to manage the shell aliases, like adding aliases, editing them, removing them, and so on.

The built-in aliases that are currently made for you are:

• ls -> list

Currently, the below functions are available for your mods to use:

• InitAliases(): Usually not needed. This populates the list of aliases and lets the shell acknowledge them.

• SaveAliases(): Saves the list of aliases to a configuration file found under the kernel configuration path.

• AddAlias(): Adds an alias to the list of aliases.

• RemoveAlias(): Removes an alias from the list of aliases.

• DoesAliasExist(): Checks to see if a particular alias exists.

• GetAliasesListFromType(): Gets a list of aliases from a shell type, excluding the built-in ones.

• GetEntireAliasListFromType(): Gets a list of aliases from a shell type, including the built-in ones.

• GetAlias(): Gets information about a specific alias.

Piping Command Output

It's possible to pipe the source command output as arguments to the target command. You can now use the wrap command to pipe all output to the target command as arguments. For example, if you're piping the output of ls to echo, you'll run the wrap -quoted ls echo command. This command executes two commands:

• ls: Executes directory listing command and buffers the output.

• echo: Executes the text printing command with the buffered output as parameters, enclosing it with the double quotes if the -quoted switch is passed.

If you find that piping command output doesn't work properly, depending on the target command, you'll have to enclose the output with the double quotes by passing wrap the -quoted switch.

The source command must have the wrappable flag as piping relies on buffering the output.