Term::Prompt - Perl extension for prompting a user for information use Term::Prompt; $value = &prompt(...); use Term::Prompt qw(termwrap); print &termwrap(...); This perl routine will take a prompt, a default response and a list of possible responses and 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. --Mark Henderson Derived from im_prompt2.pl, from anlpasswd (see ftp://info.mcs.anl.gov/pub/systems/), with permission. Revisions for Perl 5, addition of alternative help text presentation, addition of floating point type, addition of regular expression type, addition of yes/no type, and line wrapping by E. Allen Smith. Additional "types" that could be added would be a phone type, a social security type, a generic numeric pattern type... The usage is the following: x = don't 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 - Added by Allen $result = &prompt("x", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default" ); $result = &prompt("a", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default" ); $result = &prompt("n", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default" ); The result will be a positive integer or 0. $result = &prompt("i", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default", "legal_options-ignore-case-list"); $result = &prompt("c", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default", "legal_options-case-sensitive-list"); $result = &prompt("r", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default", "low", "high"); $result = &prompt("f", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default"); The result will be a floating-point number. $result = &prompt("y", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default") The result will be 1 for y, 0 for n. A default not starting with y or n (or the uc versions of these) will be treated as y for positive, n for negative. $result = &prompt("e", "text prompt", "help prompt", "default", "regular expression"); The regular expression for the last has ^ and $ surrounding it automatically; just put in .* before or after if you need to free it up before or after. - Allen 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 - it will be treated as a true "help prompt" if you capitalize the type of prompt, and otherwise will be treated as a list of options. 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.

Other Functions
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. Mark Henderson (henderson@mcs.anl.gov or systems@mcs.anl.gov) Primary contact author: Allen Smith (easmith@beatrice.rutgers.edu) the perl manpage, the Term::ReadKey manpage, and the Text::Wrap manpage.