how to get MouseMove and MouseClick in bash?

Question

I\'m wondering how to get the MouseClick and MouseMove events in bash scripting for my own simple OS events.

Please tell me how to get that events.

Answer 1

Short way

I made a script to make the command line cursor move on mouse click :

1. Enable xterm mouse tracking reporting
2. Set readline bindings to consume the escape sequence generated by clicks

It can be found here : https://github.com/tinmarino/mouse_xterm/blob/master/mouse.sh

Long way

Xterm have a mouse tracking feature

echo -e "\e[?1000;1006;1015h" # Enable tracking
echo -e "\e[?1000;1006;1015l" # Disable tracking

• Mouse click looks like \e[<0;3;21M and a release \e[<0;3;21. Where 2 is x (from left) and 22 is y (from top)
• Mouse whell up : \e[<64;3;21M
• Mouse whell down : \e[<65;3;21M
• Press C-v after enabling the mouse tracking to see that

Readline can trigger a bash callback

bind -x '"\e[<64;": mouse_void_cb' # Cannot be put in .inputrc
bind    '"\C-h"   : "$(date) \e\C-e\ef\ef\ef\ef\ef"' #Can be put in .inputrc

Readline can call multiple functions

# Mouse cursor to begining-of-line before calling click callback
bind    '"\C-98" : beginning-of-line'
bind -x '"\C-99" : mouse_0_cb'
bind    '"\e[<0;": "\C-98\C-99"'

Readline callback can change cursor (point) position with READLINE_POINT environment variable

bind -x '"\C-h"  : xterm_test'
function xterm_test {
    echo "line is $READLINE_LINE and point $READLINE_POINT"
    READLINE_POINT=24    # The cursor position (0 for begining of command)
    READLINE_LINE='coco' # The command line current content
}

Links

• Xterm control sequences
• Ctrl keys as used in vim source
• zsh script for mouse tracking : the same but in zsh (not bash)