Thanks for the heads up Sairhei! I ended up backporting 9front's ^ and _ to my copy of plan9port. It's not as flexible as having the named pipe around but it answers the immediate question.
On Sun, 22 May 2016 at 09:38 Siarhei Zirukin <ftrvxm...@gmail.com> wrote: > In 9front's version of sam there are two additional commands that could > help you with "complex" commands, perhaps. > > ^ Plan 9-command > Send the standard output of the Plan 9 command to the > command window. > > _ Plan 9-command > Send the range to the standard input, and send the > standard output of the Plan 9 command to the command > window. > > On Sat, May 21, 2016 at 11:52 PM, Mark Lee Smith <nety...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Thanks for the interesting comments. >> >> I've been making an effort to use Sam, in the interest of my own >> understanding. One of the biggest barriers I've hit is that there doesn't >> appear to be a good way to save complex edit commands for later. The man >> page suggests that it's possible to send commands to Sam from shell scripts. >> >> External communication >> Sam listens to the edit plumb port. If plumbing is not >> active, on invocation sam creates a named pipe /srv/sam.user >> which acts as an additional source of commands. Characters >> written to the named pipe are treated as if they had been >> typed in the command window. >> >> B is a shell-level command that causes an instance of sam >> running on the same terminal to load the named files. B uses >> either plumbing or the named pipe, whichever service is >> available. If plumbing is not enabled, the option allows a >> line number to be specified for the initial position to dis- >> play in the last named file (plumbing provides a more gen- >> eral mechanism for this ability). >> >> E is a shell-level command that can be used as $EDITOR in a >> Unix environment. It runs B on file and then does not exit >> until file is changed, which is taken as a signal that file >> is done being edited. >> >> I use Plan9Port on OpenBSD and typically use the plumber with Acme. I've >> changed "editor" to sam, and read the B and E scripts. As I understand it >> the plumbing approach doesn't allows sending arbitrary commands, so I've >> stopped the plumber. I'm unable to find the named pipe and looking at the >> sam source code it's not obvious to me how or whether such a pipe is >> created. Is this capability still present in Sam? Perhaps the plumber has >> completely subsumed this by now? Ultimately what I'd like to know is how >> you go about reusing common commands? Do you snarf and paste them? I was >> thinking that it would be useful to create scripts like "ap" which select >> the current paragraph (name inspired by Vim.) What's the typical workflow >> when using Sam? I don't deny that it's a great editor. Writing several >> thousand words in Sam yesterday was a pleasure. >> >> Maybe I'm completely off base here? >> >> All the best, >> >> Mark >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 20 May 2016 at 22:05 Steve Simon <st...@quintile.net> wrote: >> >>> >>> I started with Sam a sit ran on all the different unixes I used an vi an >>> emacs just felt clunky. >>> >>> I never got into help and when acme replaced that I just never made the >>> transition. >>> >>> I love Sam, though it is because I know it so well. >>> >>> btw, anyone written scripts to allow the plan9 wiki to be edited from >>> Sam? maybe the wiki is outmoded these days? >>> >>> -Steve >>> >>> >>> >>> >
