Re: access jobs information

[Andrew J Cosgriff <Andrew.Cosgriff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[ sent to zsh-users, which seemed more appropriate than zsh-workers ]

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Lew <lew@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Paul> I would like to add the current background job information to my
Paul> prompt.  I could not find an interface to do this, at least:

Paul> jno=$(jobs | wc -l)
Paul> RPROMPT="$jno"

Paul> wont work.  Any idea?

This is what a friend of mine hacked up a year or two ago to do a
similar sort of thing.

precmd () {
  if [[ -o interactive ]]
  then
    # Get a list of suspended jobs to put in the command line.
    # Have to use a temporary file because it's the only way
    # we can run the jobs builtin and set a variable within the current
    # shell - doing either of these in a subshell defeats the purpose.
    # The jobs command outputs to stderr.  Use the current hostname
    # and process ID to ensure that there's no problems even if
    # /tmp is mounted across filesystems.
    builtin jobs -r >&! /tmp/jobs$HOST$$
    if [[ -s /tmp/jobs$HOST$$ ]]
    then
      # There's at least one suspended job.  Glean the job numbers from
      # the file.  Surround the text with the relevant description and
      # proper number of spaces.
      psvar[4]="`sed -n 's/^\[\([^]]*\)\].*$/\1 /p' \
       < /tmp/jobs$HOST$$ | \
       tr -d '\012'`"
    else
      # No jobs - we can skip the calls to sed and tr.
      psvar[4]=""
    fi
    /bin/rm /tmp/jobs$HOST$$

    jobs -s
  fi
}

So I end up with the job numbers of any running (non-suspended) jobs
in psvar[4] (so you just put a %4v somewhere in PROMPT/RPROMPT) and
any suspended jobs are listed normally above my prompt.

Andrew
-- 
 - Andrew J. Cosgriff -        >> see X-headers >>       ajc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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