InWee

InWee is a convenience wrapper script to send text messages and commands to WeeChat from shell or from within WeeChat via WeeChat's FIFO pipe.

Contents

• Necessity
• Installation
  • Manual
  • With wget
  • With git
• Getting Started
  • Using from Shell
  • Using from WeeChat
• Without InWee
• Credits
• License
• Contact

Necessity

WeeChat keeps configuration in several .conf files in ~/.weechat directory. The configuration can be edited with WeeChat /set commands. Unfortunately, the same .conf files contain both the default configuration options that have not been altered by the user as well as custom configuration options specified by the user. This makes it clumsy to pick only the user specific custom configuration, save it in a separate file as backup, so that it can be applied later when needed, say after reinstallation of operating system or on a new system.

One solution to this problem is to keep all the user specific configuration in the form of /set commands in a file, say settings.txt, as shown below.

 /set irc.server.freenode.nicks humpty,humpty_
 /set irc.server.freenode.username humpty
 /set irc.server.freenode.realname "Humpty Dumpty"
 /set irc.server.freenode.autojoin #weechat,#test,#freenode
 /save irc
 /print Saved configuration

This file can be fed into WeeChat's FIFO pipe while WeeChat is running using the following shell command.

sed 's/^/*/' settings.txt > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_*

The command first prefixes every line in the file with * (asterisk) because that is how WeeChat's FIFO pipe expects the input to be. Then it feeds the lines to WeeChat's FIFO pipe.

If the above solution is good enough for you, then there is no real reason to use InWee. In that case, you can skip directly to the Without InWee section and read about how everything that can be done with InWee can also be done without it.

InWee only makes the above solution more convenient. For example, the commands in settings.txt can be fed to WeeChat with InWee by entering the following command while WeeChat is running.

inwee settings.txt

This simple command offers the following advantages over the earlier command involving sed command's output redirection.

1. It is simpler and easier to type.
2. It automatically prefixes every command in the input file with * (asterisk).
3. It automatically checks if the FIFO pipe exists at ~/.weechat. If it does not exist, it quits with an error.
4. It supports comments in the input file. Any line in the file where # (hash) is the first non-whitespace character is ignored as comment.

WeeChat can execute external commands with the /exec command and it accepts the -r option to run commands after startup, so when WeeChat is not running, it can be made to run the commands in settings.txt after starting up as follows.

weechat -r '/exec inwee settings.txt'

Getting Started

InWee is a single-file executable script: inwee.

Copy it to a directory specified in the PATH environment variable and make it executable: chmod u+x inwee. In many Linux systems, /usr/local/bin or ~/bin is a good location to copy this script to.

InWee may be invoked directly from the shell using the inwee command or from WeeChat using its /exec command. Several examples of both ways of usage are provided below.

Using from Shell

The following list shows various ways to use InWee from the shell.

1. Here is a typical example of using InWee from the shell. Say you are in a Linux support channel such as ##linux, #debian, #centos, etc. and you need to share the network controller details of your system with the channel while asking for help. To do this with InWee, you can run the commands you need to get this output and pipe it into inwee as shown below to send the output to the current buffer in WeeChat.

   lspci | grep -i network | inwee
   

2. Here are some general examples of sending text or commands from standard input to the current buffer in WeeChat. Any text or WeeChat command you pipe into the standard input of InWee is sent to WeeChat.

   echo hello world | inwee
   echo '/join #test' | inwee
   echo /part | inwee
   echo /nick newnick | inwee
   

   Note that comments in shell begin with #, therefore the WeeChat join command in the second shell command above is quoted. Any text beginning with / (slash), followed by a word and whitespace is considered as a WeeChat command. All other text is considered as text messages to be sent on chat.

3. Multiple texts and/or commands must be separated by a newline.

   printf '/join #test\n/join #flood\n' | inwee
   

   Every line of text or command must also end with a newline. Since printf does not append a newline in the end like echo does, we end the strings passed to printf in each command above with a newline.

   Blank lines, lines that consist only of whitespace characters and lines that contain #, i.e. hash, as the first non-whitespace character are ignored.

4. The previous example may also be conveniently written in the following manner.

   echo '/join #flood
   /join #test' | inwee
   

5. Text or commands may be sent to a specific WeeChat buffer with the -b or --buffer option.

   echo hello world | inwee -b 'irc.freenode.#test'
   

   With the above command, the text is sent to #test channel even when this channel is not in the current buffer.

6. Send text or commands from a file by specifying the path to the file as an argument.

   inwee input.txt
   

   The file may contain one or more lines of text or commands. Blank lines, lines that consist only of whitespace characters and lines that contain #, i.e. hash, as the first non-whitespace character are ignored. Therefore, # can be used to begin single line comments.

7. To use a custom FIFO path with WeeChat.

   echo "hello world" | inwee --fifo "$HOME/.weechat/weechat_fifo"
   

   This will make inwee use a custom FIFO path to communicate with WeeChat.

Using from WeeChat

From WeeChat's perspective, InWee is an external command that can be invoked with the inwee command. WeeChat's /exec command executes external commands inside WeeChat and displays the output locally, or sends it to a buffer. Therefore, inwee can be used within WeeChat using WeeChat's /exec command. This section shows a few such examples. Note that unlike in the previous section where the command examples are meant to be run in the shell, the commands below are meant to be run inside WeeChat directly.

1. Send text or commands from a file to the current buffer.

   /exec inwee input.txt
   

2. Send text or commands from a file to #test channel.

   /exec inwee -b irc.freenode.#test input.txt
   

Without InWee

Everything that can be done with InWee can be done without it, although it can be a little clumsy for some cases. This section is written for those who do not want to use InWee but do what can be done with InWee by working directly with WeeChat's FIFO pipe or WeeChat's /exec command. WeeChat's FIFO pipe is located at ~/.weechat by default and named as weechat_fifo_<PID> where <PID> stands for the PID of the currently running instance of WeeChat.

Assuming WeeChat is currently running and there is a FIFO pipe for WeeChat at ~/.weechat, the list below explains how something that can be done with InWee can also be done without it.

1. Send the output of a shell command from shell to WeeChat.

   With InWee:

   lspci | grep -i network | inwee
   

   Without InWee:

   lspci | grep -i network | sed 's/^/*/' > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_*
   

2. Send a message to a WeeChat channel from shell.

   With InWee:

   echo hello world | inwee
   

   Without InWee:

   echo '*hello world' > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_*
   

3. Send a WeeChat command from shell to WeeChat.

   With InWee:

   echo /nick newnick | inwee
   

   Without InWee:

   echo */nick newnick > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_*
   

4. Send text or command to a specific WeeChat buffer from shell.

   With InWee:

   echo hello world | inwee -b irc.freenode#test
   

   Without InWee:

   echo 'irc.freenode.#test *hello world' > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_*
   

5. Send text or commands in a file to WeeChat from shell.

   With InWee:

   inwee input.txt
   

   Without InWee:

   sed 's/^/*/' input.txt > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_*
   

6. Send the output of a simple shell command in WeeChat to a channel.

   With InWee:

   /exec -sh uname -a | inwee
   

   Without InWee:

   /exec -o uname -a
   

   The -sh option is necessary in the first command to ensure that the /exec command uses the shell to execute the specified shell command. This ensures that | is interpreted as the pipeline operator by the shell. Without the -sh option, the /exec command executes the specified command itself and it would interpret | as just another argument.

   The -o command is necessary in the second command to ensure that the output of the shell command is sent to the channel as chat message. Without this option, the output is only printed locally and not shared with the channel. There is no need of -o option in the first command because InWee takes care of sending the output as text message to the channel's buffer via WeeChat's FIFO pipe.

7. Send output to a specific channel in WeeChat.

   With InWee:

   /exec -sh uname -a | inwee -b irc.freenode.#test
   

   Without InWee:

   /exec -sh -o -buffer irc.freenode.#test uname -a
   

8. Send the output of a little more complex shell command, say involving pipeline operators, in WeeChat.

   With InWee:

   /exec -sh lspci | grep -i network | inwee
   

   Without InWee:

   /exec -sh -o lspci | grep -i network
   

9. Send text or commands in a file to the current buffer in WeeChat.

   With InWee:

   /exec inwee input.txt
   

   Without InWee:

   /exec -sh sed 's/^/*/' input.txt > ~/.weechat/weechat_fifo_$(pidof weechat)
   

Credits

Thank you, Dom Rodriguez, for adding support for WeeChat 1.7.

License

This is free and open source software. You can use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of it, under the terms of the MIT License. See LICENSE.md for details.

This software is provided "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, express or implied. See LICENSE.md for details.

Contact

To report bugs, suggest improvements, or ask questions, please create a new issue at http://github.com/susam/inwee/issues.