[screen-devel] Using screen automated with perl.

[Mike Mestnik]

Hello,
I've recently done some work with Perl's C bindings and I'm ready to try
something a bit bigger. I've always had an issue finding the proper
container to run a game server in, be it Quake or in this case Mooege.
The applications run on a console and that's great because having an X
server hanging around would suck. The part that is always troublesome is
that some times you'd need to type something on the console.

Enters screen, it's perhaps the most popular choice for this fact alone.
However I've used log files and FIFOs for stdout/err and stdin for one
reason, front-ends. Some times it's user invoked shell scripts and other
times it's awk(ing) the output and writing commands for the input. This
time I'd like to do a web front end, so the users can manage there game
safely. All the while I was missing the conveyance of screen, if I
actually wanted to be on the console I'd have to run tail in one window
and cat into the FIFO on another.

Here comes Perl, the idea here is that C(or perhaps even native Perl?)
can be written to attach to a running screen session and shove in some
key strokes. A full featured Perl module would be able to scrape the
whole of screen's back buffer and stay on top of any new output. A good
Perl API would also have all the keyboard macros screen would have and
even abilities that screen it self doesn’t.

To do this I'll need a good write up on how screen works. I've done some
strace(ing) and peeked a bit at the git repo and I though I'd try asking.

Thank you.