A framework for a shell in perl?

[Anonymous Monk]

I'm developing a linux based hardware device and plan to provide a Cisco IOS-like command line interface. I've considered rolling my own, but would rather not re-invent the wheel. Can anyone recommend a good Perl based framework for developing such a "shell"?

[jettero]

Wheel::ReadLine is tip top. You have command events and everything just works. POE can be a little frightening at first, but you'll get the hang of it.

[elwarren]

Suggest Term::Readline as a starting point. It supports pushing lines into it's own history buffer and other readline features.

POE has a cool module called Term::Visual but I suspect it's not the right tool for this job. Googling it did bring up a simple recipe for Console Input with POE. http://poe.perl.org/?Poe_cookbook/Console_Input

HTH

[skx]

The last time I needed such a think I used readline and did it manually because reading and parsing isn't difficult.

However that was before I knew about Term::Shell, which looks like it would suit your needs.

[Khen1950fx]

Here's an example to get you started. There are three commands: system, version, and exit. Note that subs for the commands start with "sub run_system", etc. Prefix run to the command. I don't have any Cisco devices, so I can't help you there.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $obj = cios->new();
$obj->cmdloop;

package cios;
use base qw(Term::Shell);
use CPAN;

sub prompt_str {
    my $cwd = 'cwd';
    $cwd =~ s[^\Q$ENV{HOME}\E][~];
    "cios> "
}

sub run_system {
    print "\nYour System:\n",
          "Perl $]\n",
          "$^O\n",
          "$0\n\n";
}

sub run_version {
my $mod = 'Term::Shell';
for $mod(CPAN::Shell->expand("Module", $mod)) {
     print "The current version is: ", 
     $mod->cpan_version, "\n",
     "The installed version is: ", 
     $mod->inst_version, "\n",
     $mod->inst_file, "\n";
    }
}

[metaperl]

The frameworks for building command-line apps also have "console" commands typically. See this node for a review of some.