NAME

       Term::ReadLine - Perl interface to various "readline" packages.  If no real package is found, substitutes
       stubs instead of basic functions.

SYNOPSIS

         use Term::ReadLine;
         my $term = Term::ReadLine->new('Simple Perl calc');
         my $prompt = "Enter your arithmetic expression: ";
         my $OUT = $term->OUT || \*STDOUT;
         while ( defined ($_ = $term->readline($prompt)) ) {
           my $res = eval($_);
           warn $@ if $@;
           print $OUT $res, "\n" unless $@;
           $term->addhistory($_) if /\S/;
         }

DESCRIPTION

       This package is just a front end to some other packages. It's a stub to set up a common interface to the
       various ReadLine implementations found on CPAN (under the "Term::ReadLine::*" namespace).

Minimal set of supported functions

       All the supported functions should be called as methods, i.e., either as

         $term = Term::ReadLine->new('name');

       or as

         $term->addhistory('row');

       where $term is a return value of Term::ReadLine->new().

       "ReadLine"  returns the actual package that executes the commands. Among possible values are
                   "Term::ReadLine::Gnu", "Term::ReadLine::Perl", "Term::ReadLine::Stub".

       "new"       returns the handle for subsequent calls to following functions. Argument is the name of the
                   application. Optionally can be followed by two arguments for "IN" and "OUT" filehandles.
                   These arguments should be globs.

       "readline"  gets an input line, possibly with actual "readline" support. Trailing newline is removed.
                   Returns "undef" on "EOF".

       "addhistory"
                   adds the line to the history of input, from where it can be used if the actual "readline" is
                   present.

       "IN", "OUT" return the filehandles for input and output or "undef" if "readline" input and output cannot
                   be used for Perl.

       "MinLine"   If argument is specified, it is an advice on minimal size of line to be included into
                   history.  "undef" means do not include anything into history. Returns the old value.

       "findConsole"
                   returns an array with two strings that give most appropriate names for files for input and
                   output using conventions "<$in", ">out".

       Attribs     returns a reference to a hash which describes internal configuration of the package. Names of
                   keys in this hash conform to standard conventions with the leading "rl_" stripped.

       "Features"  Returns a reference to a hash with keys being features present in current implementation.
                   Several optional features are used in the minimal interface: "appname" should be present if
                   the first argument to "new" is recognized, and "minline" should be present if "MinLine"
                   method is not dummy.  "autohistory" should be present if lines are put into history
                   automatically (maybe subject to "MinLine"), and "addhistory" if "addhistory" method is not
                   dummy.

                   If "Features" method reports a feature "attribs" as present, the method "Attribs" is not
                   dummy.

Additional supported functions

       Actually "Term::ReadLine" can use some other package, that will support a richer set of commands.

       All these commands are callable via method interface and have names which conform to standard conventions
       with the leading "rl_" stripped.

       The stub package included with the perl distribution allows some additional methods:

       "tkRunning" makes Tk event loop run when waiting for user input (i.e., during "readline" method).

       "event_loop"
                   Registers call-backs to wait for user input (i.e., during "readline" method).  This
                   supersedes tkRunning.

                   The first call-back registered is the call back for waiting.  It is expected that the
                   callback will call the current event loop until there is something waiting to get on the
                   input filehandle.  The parameter passed in is the return value of the second call back.

                   The second call-back registered is the call back for registration.  The input filehandle
                   (often STDIN, but not necessarily) will be passed in.

                   For example, with AnyEvent:

                     $term->event_loop(sub {
                       my $data = shift;
                       $data->[1] = AE::cv();
                       $data->[1]->recv();
                     }, sub {
                       my $fh = shift;
                       my $data = [];
                       $data->[0] = AE::io($fh, 0, sub { $data->[1]->send() });
                       $data;
                     });

                   The second call-back is optional if the call back is registered prior to the call to
                   $term->readline.

                   Deregistration is done in this case by calling event_loop with "undef" as its parameter:

                       $term->event_loop(undef);

                   This will cause the data array ref to be removed, allowing normal garbage collection to clean
                   it up.  With AnyEvent, that will cause $data->[0] to be cleaned up, and AnyEvent will
                   automatically cancel the watcher at that time.  If another loop requires more than that to
                   clean up a file watcher, that will be up to the caller to handle.

       "ornaments" makes the command line stand out by using termcap data.  The argument to "ornaments" should
                   be 0, 1, or a string of a form "aa,bb,cc,dd".  Four components of this string should be names
                   of terminal capacities, first two will be issued to make the prompt standout, last two to
                   make the input line standout.

       "newTTY"    takes two arguments which are input filehandle and output filehandle.  Switches to use these
                   filehandles.

       One can check whether the currently loaded ReadLine package supports these methods by checking for
       corresponding "Features".

EXPORTS

       None

ENVIRONMENT

       The environment variable "PERL_RL" governs which ReadLine clone is loaded. If the value is false, a dummy
       interface is used. If the value is true, it should be tail of the name of the package to use, such as
       "Perl" or "Gnu".

       As a special case, if the value of this variable is space-separated, the tail might be used to disable
       the ornaments by setting the tail to be "o=0" or "ornaments=0".  The head should be as described above,
       say

       If the variable is not set, or if the head of space-separated list is empty, the best available package
       is loaded.

         export "PERL_RL=Perl o=0" # Use Perl ReadLine sans ornaments
         export "PERL_RL= o=0"     # Use best available ReadLine sans ornaments

       (Note that processing of "PERL_RL" for ornaments is in the discretion of the particular used
       "Term::ReadLine::*" package).