What is it?

smenu is a selection filter just like sed is an editing filter.

This simple tool reads words from the standard input, presents them in a cool interactive window after the current line on the terminal and writes the selected word, if any, on the standard output.

After having unsuccessfully searched the NET for what I wanted, I decided to try to write my own.

I have tried hard to made its usage as simple as possible. It should work, even when using an old vt100 terminal and is UTF-8 aware.

How to build it?

smenu can be built on every system where a working terminfo development platform is available. This includes every Unix and Unix like systems I am aware of.

Please use the provided build.sh to build the executable. This script accepts the same arguments as configure, type build.sh --help the see them.

The script autogen.sh is also provided if you need to generate a new configure script from configure.ac and Makefile.am. The GNU autotools will need to be installed for this script to work.

How to install it?

Once the build process has finished, a simple make install with the appropriate privileges will do it

Some examples.

Linux example.

This program should work on most Unix but if you are using Linux, try to type the following line at a shell prompt (here: "$ " ):

$ R=$(grep Vm /proc/$$/status \
      | smenu -n20 -W $':\n' -q -c -b -g -s /VmH)
$ echo $R

Something like this should now be displayed with the program waiting for commands: (numbers are mine, yours will be different)

VmPeak¦    23840 kB
VmSize¦    23836 kB
VmLck ¦        0 kB
VmHWM ¦     2936 kB
VmRSS ¦     2936 kB
VmData¦     1316 kB
VmStk ¦      136 kB
VmExe ¦       28 kB
VmLib ¦     3956 kB
VmPTE ¦       64 kB
VmSwap¦        0 kB

A cursor should be under "VmHWM ".

After having moved the cursor to " 136 kB" and ended the program with <Enter>, the shell variable R should contain: " 136 kB".

Unix example.

The following command, which is Unix brand agnostic, should give you a scrolling window if you have more than 10 accounts on your Unix with a UID lower than 100:

$ R=$(awk -F: '$3 < 100 {print $1,$3,$4,$NF}' /etc/passwd \
      | smenu -n10 -c)
$ echo $R

On mine (LANG and LC_ALL set to POSIX) it displays:

at      25 25  /bin/bash      \
sys     0  3   /usr/bin/ksh   +
bin     1  1   /bin/bash      |
daemon  2  2   /bin/bash      |
ftp     40 49  /bin/bash      |
games   12 100 /bin/bash      |
lp      4  7   /bin/bash      |
mail    8  12  /bin/false     |
named   44 44  /bin/false     |
ntp     74 108 /bin/false     v

Note the presence of a scrollbar.

Interested?

Please use the included man page to learn more about this little program.