stebalien / named-pipe.el

named-pipe.el

An emacs package for piping text into emacs, optionally displaying it in a “pager” buffer.

Install

This package is not on melpa but can be installed with your favorate from-source emacs package manager (such as quelpa or straight).

(use-package named-pipe
  :straight (named-pipe :type git :host github :repo "Stebalien/named-pipe.el")
  :defer t
  :config
  ;; add the epipe script to the PATH
  (when-let* ((libfile (locate-library "named-pipe"))
              (bindir (concat (file-name-directory libfile) "bin")))
    (add-to-list 'exec-path bindir)))

While not required, I also recommend the xterm-color package. When present, this package will use it to process ANSI escape codes instead of the built-in ansi package, producing better results.

Examples

Pager

The bin/epipe script can be used as a pager to pipe text into emacs buffers. By default, the pager mode will also process ANSI escape codes so colors will be preserved (like less -R).

$ PAGER=/path/to/bin/epipe git log

Status FIFO

If you have a t0ol that can send status messages to a FIFO (commonly used with tools like i3-bar, dzen2, conky, lemonbar etc.), you can use this package to display these messages in emacs.

(named-pipe-readlines "status.fifo" (lambda (line) (message "alert: %s" line)))