NAME

       Dislocate - disconnect and reconnect processes

SYNOPSIS

       dislocate [ program args...  ]

INTRODUCTION

       Dislocate  allows  processes to be disconnected and reconnected to the terminal.  Possible
       uses:

              •   You can disconnect a process from a terminal at work and reconnect  from  home,
                  to continue working.

              •   After  having  your  line  be  dropped  due  to noise, you can get back to your
                  process without having to restart it from scratch.

              •   If you have a problem that you would like to show someone, you can set  up  the
                  scenario at your own terminal, disconnect, walk down the hall, and reconnect on
                  another terminal.

              •   If you are in the middle of a great game (or whatever) that does not allow  you
                  to  save,  and someone else kicks you off the terminal, you can disconnect, and
                  reconnect later.

USAGE

       When run with no arguments, Dislocate tells you about your disconnected processes and lets
       you  reconnect  to  one.   Otherwise,  Dislocate  runs  the  named  program along with any
       arguments.

       By default, ^] is an escape that lets you talk to Dislocate itself.  At  that  point,  you
       can disconnect (by pressing ^D) or suspend Dislocate (by pressing ^Z).

       Any  Tcl  or  Expect command is also acceptable at this point.  For example, to insert the
       contents of a the file /etc/motd as if you had typed it, say:

            send -i $out [exec cat /etc/motd]

       To send the numbers 1 to 100 in response to the prompt "next #", say:

            for {set i 0} {$i<100} {incr i} {
                expect -i $in "next #"
                send -i $out "$i\r"
            }

       Scripts can also be prepared and sourced in so that you don't have to  type  them  on  the
       spot.

       Dislocate  is actually just a simple Expect script.  Feel free to make it do what you want
       it to do or  just  use  Expect  directly,  without  going  through  Dislocate.   Dislocate
       understands  a  few special arguments.  These should appear before any program name.  Each
       should be separated by whitespace.  If the arguments  themselves  takes  arguments,  these
       should also be separated by whitespace.

       The -escape flag sets the escape to whatever follows.  The default escape is ^].

CAVEATS

       This  program  was  written  by  the author as an exercise to show that communicating with
       disconnected processes is easy.  There are many features that could be added, but that  is
       not the intent of this program.

SEE ALSO

       Tcl(3), libexpect(3)
       "Exploring  Expect: A Tcl-Based Toolkit for Automating Interactive Programs" by Don Libes,
       O'Reilly and Associates, January 1995.

AUTHOR

       Don Libes, National Institute of Standards and Technology

                                          7 October 1993                             DISLOCATE(1)