Pane interaction

Send input to a pane and capture its screen to interact with a running program. Attach and send keys provides examples. Sending keys and Capturing output are task guides; this page covers input defaults, capture ranges, and completion handling.

Typing into a pane¶

Two questions come up every time you send something to a pane: should tmux press Enter afterward, and should tmux interpret what you sent as key names (Enter, C-c) rather than literal characters? Choose both explicitly when a command depends on them.

Type without Enter: mserver.sendKeys([text], to: pane)

Type + Enter (default): server.run(text, in: pane) (sugar for sendKeys([text, "Enter"], to: pane))

How “literal” is chosen: literally: true option on sendKeys

Examples¶

Send a command line and press Enter:

try await server.sendKeys(["echo hi"], to: pane) // no Enter
try await server.run("echo hi", in: pane)        // sugar for sendKeys([text, "Enter"])

Reading a pane back¶

Capture reads the pane’s visible screen by default. Request scrollback when you need earlier output. A capture is a snapshot of terminal contents, including any input echoed by the application.

try await server.capture(pane)

Waiting for something to finish¶

A send call completes when input reaches tmux. It does not wait for the shell command to finish. Wait for expected output or a completion signal.

mserver.waitForOutput(...) waits for a pattern in pane output and returns an SOutputWait. Give the wait a timeout.

Capture pane output shows capture and waiting examples. Waiting and retrying explains completion conditions and timeouts.