The complete command doesn't work with interactive commands

[stevenxxiu]

Describe the bug

complete doesn't wait until interactive command finishes.

It shows nothing at first. After pressing Ctrl + C, the interactive command's output shows up.

In the test case below, the goal is to capture stderr of the command, via do { atuin search --interactive } | complete.

How to reproduce

Run atuin search --interactive | complete.

Expected behavior

I expect complete to wait until the interactive command finishes.

Screenshots

No response

Configuration

key	value
version	0.77.2
branch	makepkg
commit_hash	2d41613
build_os	linux-x86_64
build_target	x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu
rust_version	rustc 1.68.0 (2c8cc3432 2023-03-06) (Arch Linux rust 1:1.68.0-1)
cargo_version	cargo 1.68.0
build_time	2023-03-18 00:10:14 +00:00
build_rust_channel	release
features	default, zip
installed_plugins

Additional context

No response

[sophiajt]

Does do -i { atuin search --interactive } | complete work? do by default doesn't redirect stderr

[stevenxxiu]

Nope this has the same behavior as described above. No output shows at first, then once Ctrl + C is pressed, the interactive output shows up.

[sophiajt]

Makes me wonder if it doesn't want stdout redirected?

vim and similar editors have this behaviour. If so, we'd have to redirect only stderr and not stdout.

[stevenxxiu]

Makes me wonder if it doesn't want stdout redirected?

Yup that's the issue here.

[stevenxxiu]

Related to Redirect stderr · Issue #8277 · nushell/nushell.

[sophiajt]

I tried this on the latest main, and this variation seems to work for me: run-external --redirect-stderr atuin search "--interactive" | complete | $in.stderr

[sophiajt]

The reason the original one isn't working is because complete is getting, by default, stdout rather than stderr. So you need to go through the helper command to turn off the stdout and turn on the stderr.

[stevenxxiu]

Thanks, that works indeed. I suppose for complete to work with interactive commands I can just use run-external.

[fdncred]

Seems like we need to document the reason for why/how run-external works. Maybe on the bash to nushell page? It's a little odd.

On the other hand, this bash syntax is A LOT odd -i -- "$0" 3>&1 1>&2 2>&3' (commandline)) 🤣

[zhiburt]

Hi there;

Just a note that run-external works only with binaries but not builtin commands;

~/bin/nushell> run-external --redirect-stderr inspect                                                                          03/31/2023 02:22:15 AM
Error: nu::shell::external_command

  × External command failed
   ╭─[entry #22:1:1]
 1 │ run-external --redirect-stderr inspect
   ·                                ───┬───
   ·                                   ╰── did you mean 'inspect'?
   ╰────
  help: No such file or directory (os error 2)

[fdncred]

Related to this issue and with atuin, we found out this worked run-external --redirect-stderr atuin search "--interactive" | complete | $in.stderr.

Good point @zhiburt. run-external is not meant for internal commands. The error message could be more helpful though.