Provided by: libterm-prompt-perl_1.04-1_all bug

NAME

       Term::Prompt - Perl extension for prompting a user for information

SYNOPSIS

           use Term::Prompt;
           $value = prompt(...);

           use Term::Prompt qw(termwrap);
           print termwrap(...);

           $Term::Prompt::MULTILINE_INDENT = '';

PREREQUISITES

       You must have Text::Wrap and Term::ReadKey available on your system.

DESCRIPTION

       This main function of this module is to accept interactive input. You specify the type of
       inputs allowed, a prompt, help text and defaults and it will deal with the user interface,
       (and the user!), by displaying the prompt, showing the default, and checking to be sure
       that the response is one of the legal choices.  Additional 'types' that could be added
       would be a phone type, a social security type, a generic numeric pattern type...

FUNCTIONS

   prompt
       This is the main function of the module. Its first argument determines its usage and is
       one of the following single characters:

        x: do not care
        a: alpha-only
        n: numeric-only
        i: ignore case
        c: case sensitive
        r: ranged by the low and high values
        f: floating-point
        y: yes/no
        e: regular expression
        s: sub (actually, a code ref, but 'c' was taken)
        p: password (keystrokes not echoed)
        m: menu

       x: do not care
            $result = prompt('x', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default' );

           $result is whatever the user types.

       a: alpha-only
            $result = prompt('a', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default' );

           $result is a single 'word' consisting of [A-Za-z] only. The response is rejected until
           it conforms.

       n: numeric-only
            $result = prompt('n', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default' );

           The result will be a positive integer or 0.

            $result = prompt('-n', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default' );

           The result will be a negative integer or 0.

            $result = prompt('+-n', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default' );

           The result will be a any integer or 0.

       i: ignore case
            $result = prompt('i', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default',
                                 'legal_options-ignore-case-list');

       c: case sensitive
            $result = prompt('c', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default',
                                 'legal_options-case-sensitive-list');

       r: ranged by the low and high values
            $result = prompt('r', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default',
                             'low', 'high');

       f: floating-point
            $result = prompt('f', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default');

           The result will be a floating-point number.

       y: yes/no
            $result = prompt('y', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default')

           The result will be 1 for y, 0 for n. A default not starting with y, Y, n or N will be
           treated as y for positive, n for negative.

       e: regular expression
            $result = prompt('e', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default',
                             'regular expression');

           The regular expression has and implicit ^ and $ surrounding it; just put in .* before
           or after if you need to free it up before or after.

       s: sub
            $result = prompt('s', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default',
                             sub { warn 'Your input was ' . shift; 1 });
            $result = prompt('s', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default',
                             \&my_custom_validation_handler);

           User reply is passed to given code reference as first and only argument.  If code
           returns true, input is accepted.

       p: password
            $result = prompt('p', 'text prompt', 'help prompt', 'default' );

           $result is whatever the user types, but the characters are not echoed to the screen.

       m: menu
            @results = prompt(
                                   'm',
                                   {
                                   prompt           => 'text prompt',
                                   title            => 'My Silly Menu',
                       items            => [ qw (foo bar baz biff spork boof akak) ],
                                   order            => 'across',
                                   rows             => 1,
                                   cols             => 1,
                                   display_base     => 1,
                                   return_base      => 0,
                                   accept_multiple_selections => 0,
                                   accept_empty_selection     => 0,
                       ignore_whitespace => 0,
                       separator         => '[^0-9]+'
                                   },
                               'help prompt',
                                   'default');

           This will create a menu with numbered items to select. You replace the normal prompt
           argument with a hash reference containing this information:

           prompt
               The prompt string.

           title
               Text printed above the menu.

           items
               An array reference to the list of text items to display. They will be numbered
               ascending in the order presented.

           order
               If set to 'across', the item numbers run across the menu:

                1) foo    2) bar    3) baz
                4) biff   5) spork  6) boof
                7) akak

               If set to 'down', the item numbers run down the menu:

                1) foo    4) biff   7) akak
                2) bar    5) spork
                3) baz    6) boof

               'down' is the default.

           rows,cols
               Forces the number of rows and columns. Otherwise, the number of rows and columns
               is determined from the number of items and the maximum length of an item with its
               number.

               Usually, you would set rows = 1 or cols = 1 to force a non-wrapped layout. Setting
               both in tandem is untested. Cavet programmer.

           display_base,return_base
               Internally, the items are indexed the 'Perl' way, from 0 to scalar -1. The
               display_base is the number added to the index on the menu display. The return_base
               is the number added to the index before the reply is returned to the programmer.

               The defaults are 1 and 0, respectively.

           accept_multiple_selections
               When set to logical true (1 will suffice), more than one menu item may be
               selected. The return from prompt() will be an array or array ref, depending on how
               it is called.

               The default is 0. The return value is a single scalar containing the selection.

           accept_empty_selection
               When set to logical true (1 will suffice), if no items are selected, the menu will
               not be repeated and the 'empty' selection will be returned. The value of an
               'empty' selection is an empty array or a reference to same, if
               accept_multiple_selections is in effect, or undef if not.

           separator
               A regular expression that defines what characters are allowed between multiple
               responses. The default is to allow all non-numeric characters to be separators.
               That can cause problems when a user mistakenly enters the lead letter of the menu
               item instead of the item number. You are better off replacing the default with
               something more reasonable, such as:

                [,]    ## Commas
                [,/]   ## Commas or slashes
                [,/\s] ## Commas or slashes or whitespace

           ignore_whitespace
               When set, allows spaces between menu responses to be ignored, so that

                1, 5, 6

               is collapsed to

                1,5,6

               before parsing. NOTE: Do not set this option if you are including whitespace as a
               legal separator.

           ignore_empties
               When set, consecutive separators will not result in an empty entry. For example,
               without setting this option:

                1,,8,9

               will result in a return of

                (1,'',8,9)

               When set, the return will be:

                (1,8,9)

               which is probably what you want.

   Other Functions and Variables
       termwrap
           Part of Term::Prompt is the optionally exported function termwrap, which is used to
           wrap lines to the width of the currently selected filehandle (or to STDOUT or STDERR
           if the width of the current filehandle cannot be determined).  It uses the
           GetTerminalSize function from Term::ReadKey then Text::Wrap.

       MULTILINE_INDENT
           This package variable holds the string to be used to indent lines of a multiline
           prompt, after the first line. The default is "\t", which is how the module worked
           before the variable was exposed. If you do not want ANY indentation:

            $Term::Prompt::MULTILINE_INDENT = '';

   Text and Help Prompts
       What, you might ask, is the difference between a 'text prompt' and a 'help prompt'?  Think
       about the case where the 'legal_options' look something like: '1-1000'.  Now consider what
       happens when you tell someone that '0' is not between 1-1000 and that the possible choices
       are: :) 1 2 3 4 5 .....  This is what the 'help prompt' is for.

       It will work off of unique parts of 'legal_options'.

       Changed by Allen - if you capitalize the type of prompt, it will be treated as a true
       'help prompt'; that is, it will be printed ONLY if the menu has to be redisplayed due to
       and entry error. Otherwise, it will be treated as a list of options and displayed only the
       first time the menu is displayed.

       Capitalizing the type of prompt will also mean that a return may be accepted as a
       response, even if there is no default; whether it actually is will depend on the type of
       prompt. Menus, for example, do not do this.

AUTHOR

       Original Author: Mark Henderson (henderson@mcs.anl.gov or systems@mcs.anl.gov). Derived
       from im_prompt2.pl, from anlpasswd (see ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/systems/), with
       permission.

       Contributors:

       E. Allen Smith (easmith@beatrice.rutgers.edu): Revisions for Perl 5, additions of
       alternative help text presentation, floating point type, regular expression type, yes/no
       type, line wrapping and regular expression functionality added by E. Allen Smith.

       Matthew O. Persico (persicom@cpan.org): Addition of menu functionality and
       $Term::Prompt::MULTILINE_INDENT.

       Tuomas Jormola (tjormola@cc.hut.fi): Addition of code refs.

       Current maintainer: Matthew O. Persico (persicom@cpan.org)

SEE ALSO

       perl, Term::ReadKey, and Text::Wrap.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright (C) 2004 by Matthew O. Persico

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.6.1 or, at your option, any later version of
       Perl 5 you may have available.