Immediate Mode Features

[andyl]

In #125, there was a short discussion of "Immediate Mode" aka "getch" in the upcoming release of OTP 28. Here's a couple of useful features that would be possible with "Immediate Mode".

History Navigation

In interactive mode, use up/down arrows to view command history.

Tab Completion

In interactive mode, add tab completion or fzf style finder when matching filenames for the 'p' command.

I expect there will be many other ideas for Immediate Mode. Just putting this out there in advance of the OTP 28 release.

[randycoulman]

Thanks for the idea, @andyl. I think it's going to be a while before we can fully rely on OTP 28 features (to maintain backwards compatibility), though it might be worth releasing a new major version to take advantage of immediate mode sooner.

For now, though, it is possible to use rlwrap with mix test.interactive which gives standard GNU readline-style command line editing (arrow keys, Ctrl+R, etc). I just tried it, and works just like I'd expect. I'm thinking I might make this my daily driver!

[andyl]

it's going to be a while before we can fully rely on OTP 28

yes absolutely

rlwrap

great tip thanks! I adopted it.