SCRIPT(1) | General Commands Manual | SCRIPT(1) |
script
— make
typescript of terminal session
script |
[-aeFkqr ] [-t
time] [file
[command ...]] |
script |
-p [-deq ]
[-T fmt]
[file] |
The script
utility makes a typescript of
everything printed on your terminal. It is useful for students who need a
hardcopy record of an interactive session as proof of an assignment, as the
typescript file can be printed out later with
lpr(1).
If the argument file is given,
script
saves all dialogue in
file. If no file name is given, the typescript is
saved in the file typescript.
If the argument command is given,
script
will run the specified command with an
optional argument vector instead of an interactive shell.
The following options are available:
-a
-d
-p
flag, do
not sleep between records when playing back a timestamped session.-e
script
. The child command exit status is always
the exit status of script
.-F
-k
-p
-r
flag in
real time.-q
-r
-t
timescript
to
flush after every character I/O event. The default interval is 30
seconds.-T
fmt-p
, but just reports the time-stamp of
each output. This is very useful for assessing the timing of events.
If fmt does not contain any
‘%
’ characters, it indicates the
default format: ‘%n@ %s [%Y-%m-%d
%T]%n
’, which is useful for both tools and humans to read,
should be used. Note that time-stamps will only be output when different
from the previous one.
The script ends when the forked shell (or command) exits (a control-D to exit the Bourne shell (sh(1)), and exit, logout or control-D (if ignoreeof is not set) for the C-shell, csh(1)).
Certain interactive commands, such as
vi(1), create garbage in the typescript
file. The script
utility works best with commands
that do not manipulate the screen. The results are meant to emulate a
hardcopy terminal, not an addressable one.
The following environment variables are utilized by
script
:
SCRIPT
SCRIPT
environment variable is added to the
sub-shell. If SCRIPT
already existed in the users
environment, its value is overwritten within the sub-shell. The value of
SCRIPT
is the name of the
typescript file.SHELL
SHELL
exists, the shell forked by
script
will be that shell. If
SHELL
is not set, the Bourne shell is assumed.
(Most shells set this variable automatically).Record a simple csh(1) session with no additional details like input, output, and timestamping:
$ SHELL=/bin/csh script Script started, output file is typescript % date Tue Jan 5 15:08:10 UTC 2021 % exit exit Script done, output file is typescript
Now, replay the session recorded in the previous example:
$ cat ./typescript Script started on Tue Jan 5 15:08:08 2021 % date Tue Jan 5 15:08:10 UTC 2021 % exit exit Script done on Tue Jan 5 15:08:13 2021
Record a csh(1) session, but this time with additional details like timestamping:
$ SHELL=/bin/csh script -r Script started, output file is typescript % date Tue Jan 5 15:17:11 UTC 2021 % exit exit Script done, output file is typescript
In order to replay a sessions recorded with the
-r
flag, it is necessary to specify
-p
(cat(1) will
not work because of all the aditional information stored in the session
file). Also, let us use -d
to print the whole
session at once:
$ script -dp ./typescript Script started on Tue Jan 5 15:17:09 2021 % date Tue Jan 5 15:17:11 UTC 2021 % exit exit Script done on Tue Jan 5 15:17:14 2021
The script
command appeared in
3.0BSD.
The -d
, -p
and
-r
options first appeared in NetBSD
2.0 and were ported to FreeBSD 9.2.
The script
utility places
everything
in the log file, including linefeeds and backspaces. This is not what the
naive user expects.
It is not possible to specify a command without also naming the script file because of argument parsing compatibility issues.
When running in -k
mode, echo cancelling
is far from ideal. The slave terminal mode is checked for ECHO mode to check
when to avoid manual echo logging. This does not work when the terminal is
in a raw mode where the program being run is doing manual echo.
If script
reads zero bytes from the
terminal, it switches to a mode when it only attempts to read once a second
until there is data to read. This prevents script
from spinning on zero-byte reads, but might cause a 1-second delay in
processing of user input.
October 26, 2022 | macOS 14.6 |