What is Clink?

Clink combines the native Windows shell cmd.exe with the powerful command line editing features of the GNU Readline library, which provides rich completion, history, and line-editing capabilities. Readline is best known for its use in the famous Unix shell Bash, the standard shell for Mac OS X and many Linux distributions.

Features

• The same line editing as Bash (from GNU's Readline library).
• History persistence between sessions.
• Context sensitive completion;
  • Executables (and aliases).
  • Directory commands.
  • Environment variables
  • Thirdparty tools; Git, Mercurial, SVN, Go, and P4.
• New keyboard shortcuts;
  • Paste from clipboard (Ctrl+V).
  • Incremental history search (Ctrl+R and Ctrl+S).
  • Powerful completion (Tab).
  • Undo (Ctrl+Z).
  • Automatic cd .. (Ctrl+PgUp).
  • Environment variable expansion (Ctrl+Alt+E).
  • (press Alt+H for many more...)
• Scriptable completion with Lua.
• Colored and scriptable prompt.
• Auto-answering of the "Terminate batch job?" prompt.

By default Clink binds Alt+H to display the current key bindings. More features can also be found in GNU's Readline and History libraries' manuals.

Usage

There are three ways to use Clink the first of which is to add Clink to cmd.exe's autorun registry entry. This can be selected when installing Clink using the installer and Clink also provides the ability to manage this autorun entry from the command line. Running clink autorun --help has more information.

The second alternative is to manually run Clink using the command clink inject from within a command prompt session to run Clink in that session.

The last option is to use the Clink shortcut that the installer adds to Windows' start menu. This is in essence a shortcut to the command cmd.exe /k clink inject.

How Clink Works

When running Clink via the methods above, Clink checks the parent process is supported and injects a DLL into it. The DLL then hooks the WriteConsole() and ReadConsole() Windows functions. The former is so that Clink can capture the current prompt, and the latter hook allows Clink to provide it's own Readline-powered command line editing.

Compatibility Notes:

• The esc_clears_line setting has been replaced by a clink-reset-line command that can be bound to Escape (or any other key).
• The use_altgr_substitute setting has been removed. (If AltGr or lack of AltGr causes a problem, please visit the repo and open an issue with details about the problem.)

It's also possible to set any ANSI SGR escape code using sgr SGR_parameters (for example sgr 7 is the code for reverse video, which swaps the foreground and background colors).

Be careful, since some escape code sequences might behave strangely.

Readline itself can also be configured to add custom keybindings and macros by creating a Readline init file. There is excellent documentation for all the options available to configure Readline in Readline's manual.

Clink searches in the directories referenced by the following environment variables and loads any .inputrc or _inputrc files present, in the order listed here:

• %CLINK_INPUTRC%
• %USERPROFILE%
• %LOCALAPPDATA%
• %APPDATA%
• %HOME%

Configuration in files loaded earlier can be overridden by files loaded later.

Other software that also uses Readline will also look for the .inputrc file (and possibly the _inputrc file too). To set macros and keybindings intended only for Clink one can use the Readline init file conditional construct like this; $if clink [...] $endif.

Compatibility Notes:

• The clink_inputrc_base file from v0.4.8 is no longer used.
• For backward compatibility, clink_inputrc is also loaded from the above locations, but it has been deprecated and may be removed in the future.

Clink also adds some new commands and configuration variables in addition to what's covered in the Readline documentation.

New Configuration Variables

New Commands

Completion Colors

When colored-completion-prefix is configured to on, then the "so" color from %LS_COLORS% is used to color the common prefix when displaying possible completions. The default for "so" is magenta, but for example set LS_COLORS=so=90 sets the color to bright black (which shows up as a dark gray).

When colored-stats is configured to on, then the color definitions from %LS_COLORS% (using ANSI escape codes) are used to color file completions according to their file type or extension. Each definition is a either a two character type id or a file extension, followed by an equals sign and then the SGR parameters for an ANSI escape code. Multiple definitions are separated by colons. Also, since %LS_COLORS% doesn't cover readonly files, hidden files, doskey aliases, or shell commands the color.readonly, color.hidden, color.doskey, and color.cmd Clink settings exist to cover those.

Here is an example where %LS_COLORS% defines colors for various types.

• so= defines the color for the common prefix for possible completions.
• fi= defines the color for normal files.
• di= defines the color for directories.
• ex= defines the color for executable files.

set LS_COLORS=so=90:fi=97:di=93:ex=92:*.pdf=30;105:*.md=4

Let's break that down:

• so=90 uses bright black (dark gray) for the common prefix for possible completions.
• fi=97 uses bright white for files.
• di=93 uses bright yellow for directories.
• ex=92 uses bright green for executable files.
• *.pdf=30;105 uses black on bright magenta for .pdf files.
• *.md=4 uses underline for .md files.

Popup window

The clink-popup-complete, clink-popup-directories, and clink-popup-history commands show a popup window that lists the available completions, directory history, or command history. Here's how it works:

Extending Clink

The Readline library allows clients to offer an alternative path for creating completion matches. Clink uses this to hook Lua into the completion process making it possible to script the generation of matches with Lua scripts. The following sections describe this in more detail and show some examples.

The Location of Lua Scripts

Clink loads all Lua scripts it finds in these directories:

1. All directories listed in the clink.path setting, separated by semicolons.
2. If clink.path is not set, then the DLL directory and the profile directory are used (see File Locations for info about the profile directory).
3. All directories listed in the %CLINK_PATH% environment variable, separated by semicolons.

Lua scripts are reloaded each time the edit prompt is activated.

local my_generator = clink.generator(priority)

function my_generator:generate(line_state, match_builder)
    -- Use the line_state object to examine the current line and create matches.
    -- Submit matches to Clink using the match_builder object.
    -- Return true or false.
end

line_state is a line object that has information about the current line.

match_builder is a builder object to which matches can be added.

If no further match generators need to be called then the function should return true. Returning false or nil continues letting other match generators get called.

Here is an example script that supplies git branch names as matches for git checkout. It's based on git_branch_autocomplete.lua from collink.clink-git-extensions. The version here is updated for the new Clink Lua API, and for illustration purposes it's been simplified to not support git aliases.

local git_branch_autocomplete = clink.generator(1)

local function string.starts(str, start)
    return string.sub(str, 1, string.len(start)) == start
end

local function is_checkout_ac(text)
    if string.starts(text, "git checkout") then
        return true
    end
    return false
end

local function get_branches()
    -- Run git command to get branches.
    local handle = io.popen("git branch -a 2>&1")
    local result = handle:read("*a")
    handle:close()
    -- Parse the branches from the output.
    local branches = {}
    if string.starts(result, "fatal") == false then
        for branch in string.gmatch(result, "  %S+") do
            branch = string.gsub(branch, "  ", "")
            if branch ~= "HEAD" then
                table.insert(branches, branch)
            end
        end
    end
    return branches
end

function git_branch_autocomplete:generate(line_state, match_builder)
    -- Check if it's a checkout command.
    if not is_checkout_ac(line_state:getline()) then
        return false
    end
    -- Get branches and add them (does nothing if not in a git repo).
    local matchCount = 0
    for _, branch in ipairs(get_branches()) do
        match_builder:addmatch(branch)
        matchCount = matchCount + 1
    end
    return matchCount > 0 -- If we found branches, then stop other match generators.
end

The :getwordbreakinfo() Function

A generator can influence word breaking for the end word by defining a :getwordbreakinfo() function. The function takes a line_state line object that has information about the current line. If it returns nil or 0, the end word is truncated to 0 length. This is the normal behavior, which allows Clink to collect and cache all matches and then filter them based on typing. Or it can return two numbers: word break length and an optional end word length. The end word is split at the word break length: one word contains the first word break length characters from the end word (if 0 length then it's discarded), and the next word contains the rest of the end word truncated to the optional word length (0 if omitted).

For example, when the environment variable match generator sees the end word is abc%USER it returns 3,1 so that the last two words become "abc" and "%" so that its generator knows it can do environment variable matching. But when it sees abc%FOO%def it returns 8,0 so that the last two words become "abc%FOO%" and "" so that its generator won't do environment variable matching, and also so other generators can produce matches for what follows, since "%FOO%" is an already-completed environment variable and therefore should behave like a word break. In other words, it breaks the end word differently depending on whether the number of percent signs is odd or even, to account for environent variable syntax rules.

And when an argmatcher sees the end word begins with a flag character it returns 0,1 so the end word contains only the flag character in order to switch from argument matching to flag matching.

local envvar_generator = clink.generator(10)

function envvar_generator:generate(line_state, match_builder)
    -- Does the word end with a percent sign?
    local word = line_state:getendword()
    if word:sub(-1) ~= "%" then
        return false
    end

    -- Add env vars as matches.
    for _, i in ipairs(os.getenvnames()) do
        match_builder:addmatch("%"..i.."%", "word")
    end

    match_builder:setsuppressappend()   -- Don't append a space character.
    match_builder:setsuppressquoting()  -- Don't quote envvars.
    return true
end

function envvar_generator:getwordbreakinfo(line_state)
    local word = line_state:getendword()
    local in_out = false
    local index = nil

    -- Paired percent signs denote already-completed environment variables.
    -- So use envvar completion for abc%foo%def%USER but not for abc%foo%USER.
    for i = 1, #word do
        if word:sub(i, i) == "%" then
            in_out = not in_out
            if in_out then
                index = i - 1
            else
                index = i
            end
        end
    end

    -- If there were any percent signs, return word break info to influence the
    -- match generators.
    if index then
        return index, (in_out and 1) or 0
    end
end

clink.argmatcher("foobar")
:addflags("-foo", "-bar")
:addarg(
    { "hello", "hi" },
    { "world", "wombles" }
)

C:\>foobar hello -foo wo
world   wombles
C:\>foobar hello -foo wo_

a_parser = clink.argmatcher():addarg({ "foo", "bar" })
b_parser = clink.argmatcher():addarg({ "abc", "123" })
c_parser = clink.argmatcher()
c_parser:addarg({ "foobar" .. b_parser })
c_parser:addarg({ c_parser })

function rainbow_function(word)
    return { "red", "white", "blue" }
end

the_parser = clink.argmatcher()
the_parser:addarg({ "zippy", "bungle", "george" })
the_parser:addarg({ rainbow_function, "yellow", "green" })

-- Shorthand form; requires tables.
clink.argmatcher()
  { "one", "won" }
  { "two", "too" }
  { "-a", "-b", "/?", "/h" }

-- Normal form:
clink.argmatcher()
:addarg(
    { "one", "won" }
    { "two", "too" }
)
:addflags("-a", "-b", "/?", "/h")

To facilitate custom match generators that may wish to do this there is the clink.match_display_filter variable. This can be set to a function that will then be called before matches are to be displayed.

function my_display_filter(matches)
    new_matches = {}

    for _, m in ipairs(matches) do
        local _, _, n = m:find("\\([^\\]+)$")
        table.insert(new_matches, n)
    end

    return new_matches
end

function my_match_generator(text, first, last)
    ...

    clink.match_display_filter = my_display_filter
    return true
end

The function's single argument matches is a table containing what Clink is going to display. The return value is a table with the input matches filtered as required by the match generator. The value of clink.match_display_filter is reset every time match generation is invoked.

Compatibility Note: When a match display filter has been set, it changes how match generation behaves.

• Normally match generation only happens at the start of a new word. The full set of potential matches is remembered and dynamically filtered based on further typing.
• When a match display filter is set, then match generation is also re-run whenever matches are displayed. This is necessary for backward compatibility with how generators and match display filters were able to influence each other.
• This means if a match generator made contextual decisions other than just filtering then it could potentially behave differently in Clink v1.x than it did in v0.x.

local p = clink.promptfilter(30)
function p:filter(prompt)
    return "new prefix "..prompt.." new suffix" -- Add ,false to stop filtering.
end

local green  = "\x1b[92m"
local yellow = "\x1b[93m"
local cyan   = "\x1b[36m"
local normal = "\x1b[m"

-- A prompt filter that discards any prompt so far and sets the
-- prompt to the current working directory.  An ANSI escape code
-- colors it yellow.
local cwd_prompt = clink.promptfilter(30)
function cwd_prompt:filter(prompt)
    return yellow..os.getcwd()..normal
end

-- A prompt filter that inserts the date at the beginning of the
-- the prompt.  An ANSI escape code colors the date green.
local date_prompt = clink.promptfilter(40)
function date_prompt:filter(prompt)
    return green..os.date("%a %H:%M")..normal.." "..prompt
end

-- A prompt filter that may stop further prompt filtering.
-- This is a silly example, but on Wednesdays, it stops the
-- filtering, which in this example prevents git branch
-- detection and the line feed and angle bracket.
local wednesday_silliness = clink.promptfilter(45)
function wednesday_silliness:filter(prompt)
    if os.date("%a") == "Wed" then
        -- The ,false stops any further filtering.
        return prompt.." HAPPY HUMP DAY! ", false
    end
end

-- A prompt filter that appends the current git branch.
local git_branch_prompt = clink.promptfilter(50)
function git_branch_prompt:filter(prompt)
    for line in io.popen("git branch 2>nul"):lines() do
        local branch = line:match("%* (.+)$")
        if branch then
            return prompt.." "..cyan.."["..branch.."]"..normal
        end
    end
end

-- A prompt filter that adds a line feed and angle bracket.
local bracket_prompt = clink.promptfilter(150)
function bracket_prompt:filter(prompt)
    return prompt.."\n> "
end

Wed 12:54 c:\dir [master]
> _

Wed 12:54 c:\dir HAPPY HUMP DAY! _

"\e[1;2F": transpose-word

"\e\e[1;2R": history-substring-search-backward

Changes

Releases from chrisant996/clink fork

v1.1.10

• Fixed #32 hooking ReadConsoleW on Windows 7.

v1.1.9

• Added backward compatibility for clink.match_display_filter. The clink-completions/git.lua script uses it a lot, and that should all be working now.
• settings.add adds a color setting when the type is string and the name starts with "color.".
• settings.get now has an extra parameter to request the user friendly color name when getting a color setting.
• Added clink.version_encoded variable with the Clink version number as MMmmmpppp (e.g. v1.1.9 is 10010009) to make it easy for scripts to check for feature availability.
• The clink info command now shows Lua script paths as well.
• Fixed backward compatibility for loading scripts from the profile directory (if clink.path isn't set, then load scripts from the DLL directory and the profile directory).
• Fixed some color.input bleed through to other things (introduced in v1.1.5).
• Fixed scroll commands (regression introduced by input line color in v1.1.5).
• Fixed horizontally sorted match display and re-enabled the performance fix from v1.1.4.
• Fixed wildcard evaluation with non-file and non-directory matches (e.g. a branch name origin/master accidentally didn't match or or *ma because of the /).
• Fixed sort order of foo\ vs foo.bar\ when displaying matches or using the menu-complete family of commands.
• Fixed potentially-missing trailing path separator when menu-complete completes a directory match (regression introduced by wildcard matching in v1.1.5).
• Other obscure minor fixes.

v1.1.8

• Fixed file match completions when an argmatcher only generates flag matches.
• Fixed automatic inferring whether Readline should use filename completion and/or display rules (regression introduced by backward compatibility in v1.1.3-alpha).
• Fixed backward compatibility for clink.find_files() and clink.find_dirs() (regression introduced by performance improvement in v1.1.7).
  • Ignore extra arguments after the first one (the performance improvement in v1.1.7 revealed that some scripts call clink.find_files() with extra invalid arguments; e.g. clink-completions/modules/matchers.lua).
  • Don't append a trailing path separator on directory names returned by these functions (the new os.globfiles() and os.globdirs() functions do, but the old clink.find_files() and clink.find_dirs() functions should not).
• Fixed backward compatibility for coloring matches (regression introduced by backward compatibility changes in v1.1.4).

v1.1.7

• Performance improvement when displaying matches: When enumerating files and dirs, the os.globfiles and os.globdirs functions have all the info about each file. Now they can return that info in a table. This frees the match display function from needing to do any further file system IO. The performance boost is noticeable.
• Rewrote the color settings: the .fg and .bg sub-settings are gone, and the main setting now uses a more natural syntax (e.g. clink set color.input bright yellow or clink set color.modmark bright cyan on blue).
• Added "cmd" match type for shell (CMD.EXE) command completions.
• Added VT emulation for the reverse video SGR parameters.
• Fixed tab completion for clink set setting, and also handle the new color setting syntax.
• Fixed confusing behavior if multiple scripts try to add settings with the same name (now the first one succeeds and the rest report errors).

v1.1.6

• Hooked up tilde completion in the cd, md, and rd command argmatchers.
• Hooked up tilde completion with the exec.enable setting ("~\pro" matches "C:\Users\myusername\program.exe").
• When terminal.emulation is auto, now it also detects ANSI{32|64}.DLL just like Clink 0.4.8 did.

v1.1.5

• The menu-complete family of commands now support matching ? and * wildcards when the match.wild setting is enabled.
• Added colour.input and colour.modmark settings for coloring Readline's input line.
• Added clink.upper() Lua function, and both clink.lower() and clink.upper() are properly UTF8 aware now.
• Added clink-copy-word command that copies the word at the cursor to the clipboard.
• Added clink.promptfilter setting to control whether to filter the prompt with Lua scripts.
• Renamed terminal.emulate setting to terminal.emulation.
• Improved executable file extension logic to consistently use %PATHEXT% (and efficiently).
• Improved file extension logic (e.g. "file.foo bar" has no extension because of the space).
• Updated arg matcher for clink itself (was missing some flags).
• Changed colour.hidden setting to not be set by default.
• Fixed #28 Tab completion for "~" does not work.
• Fixed #25 Unicode surrogate pairs (and emoji) input isn't working -- Microsoft Terminal renders the text correctly, but ConEmu and the default conhost still don't (and that isn't a Clink issue).
• Fixed screen size bug in Readline on Windows.
• Fixed the backwards values in the terminal.emulation setting.
• Fixed .... so it works properly again.
• Fixed case sensitive sorting of matches.
• Fixed script error when %PATHEXT% is empty.
• Fixed the exec.cwd Clink setting to default to true, so that the default behavior is consistent with how v0.4.x behaved.
• Fixed the cd, md, rd, etc argmatchers to only match one argument to be consistent with the actual command syntax.

v1.1.4

• Automatically detect when running inside ConEmu and disable Clink's Virtual Terminal emulation.
• Added search-ignore-case inputrc variable that makes the history search commands case insensitive.
• Suppress adding a space after completing a flag match that ends with : or = (e.g. msbuild -maxCpuCount:).
• Report any errors while loading Lua scripts.
• Report an error if a Lua script tries to add a flag string that begins with a letter.
• Fixed slow printing of possible matches. Readline is inefficient about emitting output, so Clink supplies a custom implementation.
• Fixed some bugs in auto detection of flag prefix characters.
• Fixed backward compatibility for flags, and for args when merging two parsers by calling clink.arg.register_parser('foo') multiple times for the same command string.
• Fixed truncated message when the last line of a prompt exceeds 128 characters.
• Fixed abort (Ctrl+G or Esc) in non-incremental history search mode.
• Fixed saved values for settings added by Lua scripts; now the saved value is available to the script immediately on adding the setting, and saved values are retained even if the setting isn't always added by the script.
• Fixed (and documented) shorthand form for defining an argmatcher.
• Fixed length of colored match prefix after a path separator.
• Fixed normalizing a slash by itself (command / mustn't become command \ since that can interfere with completing flags).
• Fixed the completion-auto-query-items inputrc variable.
• Fixed the key binding list to correctly respect completion-display-width.
• No visible effect yet: internal change that parses the input line to identify colors to use for each word (command, argument, flag, etc), but the colors aren't yet applied to the input line.

v1.1.3-alpha

• Fixed argmatcher lookup to be more strict, like in Clink 0.4.9 (match exact names, or name plus an extension from %PATHEXT%).
• Backward compatibility:
  • Most things should work now.
  • Dropping the new Clink on top of the vendor\clink directory in Cmder seems to work -- but make a backup before you try this at home!
• API changes:
  • Added log.info() function.
  • Added Clink version numbers in clink.version_major, etc.
  • Added _argmatcher:getwordbreakinfo() callback; removed _argmatcher:setprefixincluded() (it was a mess, and it was new to v1.x, so there's no compatibility concern with removing it).
  • Deprecated _argmatcher:setflagprefix(); now it happens automagically when using _argmatcher:addflags().
  • Introduced several deprecated functions to support backward compatibility.
• Improvements to Lua debugger:
  • Added lua.traceback_on_error, lua.break_on_error, and lua.break_on_traceback settings to make debugging script errors easier.
  • Made pause() consistent about pausing in the caller (rather than sometimes inside the pause command itself).
  • The debugger automatically shows the stack trace when entering debug mode, and on every pause.
  • Show 3 lines of source context by default.
  • The help list is sorted now.
  • Fixed the set command in the debugger to behave as documented.

v1.1.2-alpha

• Documentation is mostly updated; just the argmatcher Lua API and Clink command line options are left to be documented.
• Added history.max_lines setting that controls how many lines of command history to save (1 to 50000, default is 2500).
• Added readline.hide_stderr setting that can suppress stderr output from the Readline library.
• For backward compatibility with 0.4.8, clink_inputrc files are loaded as well.
• Lua script API changes:
  • addmatch() in Lua scripts takes an optional match type argument.
  • Removed displayable, aux, and suffix fields in matches.
  • Revert the change to disallow mixing file/directory/symlink with other match types (it broke the tests and certain completion scenarios).
• Fixed issues:
  • #18 alt+digit then alt+ctrl+y isn't working.
  • #17 arrow keys don't exit reverse-search-history like in bash.
  • #16 problems with $T in doskey macros.
  • #13 clink history delete <n> returns a CRT error.
• Other fixes:
  • There should be no more problems running on Windows Insider builds because Clink now uses Detours for hooking APIs.
  • Fixed crash in insert-completions due to heap failure (introduced by the performance changes for displaying matches).
  • Fixed clink and history built-in aliases (solve glitchy path problem).
  • Fixed scrolling to top of screen buffer.
  • Fixed env var and set completions.
  • Fixed tilde-expand for quoted text.
  • Fixed Esc in Readline's digit argument input mode (it doesn't try to cancel the mode, because that's not how Readline is documented to work).
  • Fixed exit code from some clink command line options.
• Set locale to UTF8 much earlier to avoid quirky behavior early in script processing.

v1.1.1-alpha

• Exclusively use Readline's completion implementation. This (with fixes and enhancements in Readline itself) makes the completion experience much nicer and more sophisticated, and removes a lot of code that was added in v1.0.0a0.
• Exclusively use Readline's key binding implementation. This makes it possible to have a single consistent way to set key bindings (inputrc) and for clink-show-help to list all key bindings, and removes a lot of code that was added in v1.0.0a0.
• Converted all of Clink's internal key behaviors to be implemented as commands that can be bound in the inputrc file.
• Rewrote and refactored the pagination routine to be used in multiple places.
• Fixed prompt filtering to correctly use the specified priority order.
• Readline library:
  • Updated the Readline library from v6.2 to v8.0. This picked up lots of bug fixes and new capabilities (for example colored completions).
  • Changed Readline to support backslash as a path separator.
  • The pager prompt in Readline is optionally colored, controlled by the colour.interact Clink setting.
  • Added completion-auto-query-items config variable (on by default) which asks whether to list possible matches when the number of lines listed will fill one screen page.
  • Added history-point-at-end-of-anchored-search config variable in inputrc to make the cursor point behave like 4Dos/4NT/TakeCommand when searching forward and backward through command history.
  • Fixed prev history at top of history.
  • Fixed to get the current values of environment variables when needed, rather than always getting the value from whenever Clink was started.
  • Fixed coloring directory completions.
  • Fixed menu-complete for \dir and . and ...
  • Fixed slow performance when displaying matches. Readline was calling stat() at least once per match (!!). A new match type field enables faster performance, coloring readonly and hidden file matches, applying filename completion rules only to filenames (vs branch names or other text strings), correct match de-duplication, and more. The Lua match APIs can supply the new match type.
  • Fixed inserting a completion to happen as a single undo group.
  • Fixed tilde to map to %USERPROFILE% instead of %APPDATA% on Windows.
• Typing a directory by itself uses cd /d to change to the directory:
  • Typing a directory with a trailing path separator changes to the directory.
  • Typing ..\ changes to the parent directory.
  • Typing ... or .... etc moves up an extra parent directory level for each extra dot (2 dots move up one parent, 3 dots moves up two parents, etc). A trailing path separator is optional when there are more than 2 dots.
  • Typing - or cd - or chdir - changes to the previous directory.
• Commands that are new, enhanced, or fixed:
  • Added add-history and remove-history commands (similar to 4Dos/4NT/TakeCommand).
  • Got the menu-complete, menu-complete-backward, and old-menu-complete commands working (they never worked properly before in Clink).
    • Also added a corresponding old-menu-complete-backward command for reverse order.
    • All of the *-menu-complete-* commands support wildcards (* and ?).
  • Added clink-show-help command (Alt+H). The help now lists all key bindings, and it shows user-friendly key names (like A-Up or C-x,C-r or C-S-PgUp or A-C-S-F3).
  • Added clink-popup-completions command that shows a popup window listing possible completions. Enter inserts the highlighted completion.
  • Added clink-popup-directories command that shows a popup window listing recent directories. Enter changes to the highlighted directory, or Shift+Enter inserts the highlighted directory in the editing line (or Ctrl+Enter).
  • Added clink-popup-history command that shows a popup window listing command history. Enter executes the highlighted command, or Shift+Enter jumps to the highlighted command in the history (or Ctrl+Enter).
  • Added clink-scroll-lineup, clink-scroll-linedown, clink-scroll-page-up, clink-scroll-page-down, clink-scroll-top, and clink-scroll-bottom commands that do what it looks like they'd do and are bound to the keys it looks like they'd be.
  • Added clink-expand-doskey command (Ctrl+Alt+f) that expands the current line according to the current doskey aliases.
  • Added clink-expand-env-var command (Ctrl+Alt+e) that expands the environment variable at the cursor point.
  • Added clink-exit command (Alt+F4) that exits CMD.
• Fixed keyboard input issues:
  • Esc is a bindable key now (\e[27;27~).
  • Added more bindable key combinations (run clink echo then press keys to see the key sequence to use in the inputrc file).
  • Ctrl+@ (NUL) didn't work.
  • Ins toggles insert/overwrite mode.
  • Unbound keys are ignored now, instead of inserting gibberish characters (part of the terminal internal key sequence).
  • Fixed input handling so the quoted-insert command can work properly.
  • Fixed Esc while searching.
  • Fixed vi mode (was working in v0.4.9, but not in v1.0.x).
• Fixed command history issues:
  • The dont_add_to_history_cmds Clink setting is a space-delimited list of commands to not add to history.
  • Fixed bleeding between history banks.
  • Fixed uninitialized variable that made history updates intermittently do nothing or corrupt the other history bank.
  • Fixed output from clink history to convert to UTF16 when writing to the console (but write UTF8 when output is redirected).
• Fixed terminal output issues:
  • Added terminal.emulate Clink setting that controls whether Clink does VT emulation or passes all ANSI escape codes directly to the console host. For example, this lets the prompt and completion coloring take advantage of more sophisticated ANSI escape codes such as XTerm 256 color and 16 bit color support.
  • Added back support for the prefer-visible-bell config variable.
  • Fixed underline support.
  • Fixed handling for UTF8 output from Readline.
  • Fixed invisible cursor point in Lua debugger.
• Completions:
  • Added match.sort_dirs Clink setting that specifies where to sort directories in the list of possible completions: before files, mixed in with files, or after files.
  • Don't attempt completing incomplete UNC paths: at least the \\server\share\ path components are required (for anything shorter the OS APIs are guaranteed to fail, but will fail slowly).
  • Fixed sorting to use Unicode aware locale based sorting (like Windows does) instead of dumb UTF8 byte comparisons.
  • Fixed arbitrary limit on completions (had been limited to 64KB worth of completions).
  • Fixed quoting spaces in completions.
  • Fixed to use the same list as CMD for characters that require quoting.
  • Fixed normalizing UNC paths.
  • Fixed volume relative completions (e.g. x:foo).
  • Disallow mixing file/directory/symlink with other match types. This was to avoid a confusing/malfunctioning case in match display and prefix highlighting.
• Fixed UTF8 encoding in various Lua functions.
• Fixed printing stderr output from Readline, Lua, and Clink.
• Fixed crashes and other failures when starting Clink in 32 bit CMD.
• Fixed some memory leaks that accumulated with each new line of input.
• Fixed prompt filtering API to be backward compatible with v0.4.9 scripts.
• Fixed Lua errors from clink set (it neglected to fully initialize Clink's Lua integration before loading Lua scripts).
• Fixed UTF8 conversion bug that could truncate a string without fully converting it.
• Fixed serious rampant memory corruption bug in v1.0.x (not present in v0.4.9), which had been causing intermittent malfunctions and data corruption and crashes.
• Fixed multi-line doskey macros to show the prompt in between lines, like CMD does.
• Removed the 4096 byte limit on input.
• Renamed the Clink DLL back to what it was in v0.4.x, to fix compile time problems.
• Other fixed issues:
  • mridgers #544 Clink v1.0.0.a1 doesn't support cyrillic characters keyboard input on Windows 10 with console V2.
  • mridgers #543 Not compatible with Windows Insider Build 20150.
  • mridgers #537 Clink breaks the CMDS tool.
  • mridgers #520 Clink 1.0.0.a1 - clink set history_io 1 Error.
  • mridgers #519 Clink v1.0.0.a1 - -s|--scripts [path] command line arg removed?
  • mridgers #516 Doskey $T not handled properly.
  • mridgers #512 Command history missing in .history.
  • mridgers #503 Keyboard shortcut for scrolling.
  • mridgers #501 Ctrl+Backspace works now.
  • mridgers #487 Clink breaks ConEmu-specific Escape codes.
  • mridgers #480 History never saved.
  • mridgers #465 Using LuaJIT (FFI).
  • mridgers #456 Clear-screen not working properly when PROMPT is two lines long.
  • mridgers #453 Wrong cursor position when a line contains non-printable characters.
  • mridgers #442 Unable to paste more than 1024 characters using Ctrl+V.
  • mridgers #422 Problem with filename modifiers.
  • mridgers #420 Use NtSuspendProcess instead of CreateToolhelp32Snapshot to freeze the threads.
  • mridgers #372 Provide a way to select a previous directory.
  • mridgers #365 history-search behavior.
  • mridgers #342 Clink_inputrc not being processed if it the clink_inputrc is a link (created via mklink).
• Fixed many other bugs.

Releases from mridgers/clink original repo

v1.0.0a1 (alpha test release)

• Improve terminal integration with the Readline library.
• Internal improvements to the built-in ecma48 terminal emulator.
• Fixed use after free in Doskey emulation.
• Fixed dash-dash flag completion.
• Search ancestors for a compatible target process (for when cmd.exe starts another process that subsequently starts clink; especially useful during development).
• Use clink/terminal's wcwidth() implementation.
• screen_buffer::set_cursor() should be relative to the visible area.
• Try to adjust the cursor position better when resizing the terminal.
• Some internal Lua functions needed the unquoted clink exe path.
• The origin path now affects the hash in the dll cache, to guard against directory moves.
• More code reorganization.

v1.0.0a0 (alpha test release)

• Extensive code reorganization, refactoring, and rewriting -- multiple times -- almost everything was touched.
• OS integration:
  • Fixed Doskey macros on Win8, and on Win10.
  • Fixed clink_x??.exe startup stall on Windows 10.
  • Removed XP support. It doesn't load DLLs like Clink uses them.
  • Removed Powershell support.
• Readline integration:
  • Search for multiple places for [.|_]inputrc (fixes mridgers #258).
  • Disabled Readline's completion code, and only use the clink alternative code.
  • Removed redundant slash translation and shims to make it happen.
  • Removed control of Readline's suffix appending and disabled it.
• clink commands and flags:
  • Changed --cfgdir to --profile, it's no longer required, and added help about it.
  • Added a --version option to print Clink's version.
  • Added clink info to print information about Clink.
  • Added clink echo command to echo input key sequences to stdout.
  • Added clink history command (fixes mridgers #172).
  • Added 'history' as an alias for clink history.
  • Added internal --list flag to clink set for match generation.
  • Removed '--scripts' argument (fixes mridgers #206).
  • Updated clink autorun command's help text.
• Lua scripts:
  • Prefer userprofile over other standard environment variables for where to look for lua scripts.
  • New API for argument style completion scripts.
  • Refactored prompt filtering, and introduced new prompt filtering API.
  • Refactored generating matches, and introduced new match generator API.
  • Removed built in completions scripts for git, go, hg, and p4. There's better ones.
  • Renamed many of clink's Lua functions.
  • Moved functions from clink to os in Lua.
  • Removed clink.is_match() in Lua; don't presume anything on anyone's behalf about matches.
  • Added some current dir functions in Lua.
  • Added some env/dir functions in Lua.
  • Exposed path manipulation functions to Lua.
  • Embed the core Lua scripts instead of loading them from files.
• Terminal IO:
  • Added a module for scrolling the screen.
  • Rewrote the terminal emulation module, and all Readline IO goes through it.
  • Use VT220-style control codes for special keys.
  • If Alt is pressed send ESC in the input stream rather than setting meta bit.
  • Replaced wcwidth() with a more complete and correct version.
• Settings:
  • Added clink_path setting for where to look for lua scripts.
  • Added match.ignore_case setting.
  • Added files.unc_paths setting for optional matching from UNC paths.
  • Added a setting to skip adding lines that start with history.
  • Removed esc_clears_line setting.
  • Pasting CRLFs doesn't really make sense.
  • Don't write out settings that are set to default.
• Make sure Ctrl-C doesn't modify history.
• Make a cached copy of Clink's DLL when injecting so as to not lock the master.
• Guard against Readline's writes to stderr.
• Remove clink_inputrc_base file and embed its content (fixes mridgers #257).
• Include more metadata in the Clink's executables.

v0.4.9

• Fixed broken Doskey on Win10 (#438, #451)

v0.4.8

• Environment variable 'clink_profile' overrides Clink's profile path (#390).
• Load a clink_inputrc file from Clink's profile directory (fixes #406).
• Bug fixes;
  • Redraw issues when prompts end in OSC ANSI codes (#387, #384).
  • Fixed 'clink autorun --help' crash.

v0.4.7

• Bug fixes;
  • Sometimes autorun tries to run clink.exe (#374).
  • Autorun would cause cmd.exe to return an error if it wasn't interactive (#373).

v0.4.6

• HOME is only set if it is currently unset.
• Readline can be initialised with .inputrc and _inputrc files too (#258).
• Bug fixes;
  • Executable completion;
    • Paths from PATH were checked twice.
    • Incorrect results were returned for words ending in '.' or '-'.
    • Directories . and .. were incorrectly displayed.
  • Fixed a crash if .bat script's stdout is redirected (#366).
  • Occasional crash when injecting Clink (#351).
  • Display errors;
    • When editing near the window's right-hand edge (#347).
    • Double display of multi-line prompts when resizing the terminal (#352).
    • Very rare wrap artefacts when making the terminal window larger.
  • Doskey emulation (#344).
  • Improved 'clink autorun' help (#348).
  • Fixed launching Clink when clink.bat is renamed (#357).

v0.4.5

• Improved 'clink autorun'. It now defaults to the Current User registry hive.
• 'clink set' gives more details for enumeration-type settings.
• Tab completion for p4vc.
• New settings 'history_expand_mode' to control history expansion in quotes (#317).
• Bug fixes;
  • Use full width of the terminal (#337).
  • Fixed MinGW compile error (#335).
  • Autorun now defaults to the current user's hive (#332).
  • Creating clink.html no longer needs Pandoc, plus it looks a bit better (#331).
  • Added settings to control history expansion (#326).
  • Correct fallback when 'use_altgr_substitute' is off (#325).
  • Load history prior to saving it on shutdown (#318).
  • Added Shift-Tab documentation and menu completion example (#190).
  • Added shim for backwards menu completion (#190).
  • Input handling now outputs '\e`Z' for Shift-Tab (#190).
  • Updated Readme with current Premake info (#310).
  • Guard against there being no buffer to read from (#304).
  • Fixed artefacts when resizing conhost's buffer (#139).
  • Clear remaining characters if scroll window was too small (#301)
  • Escape % characters when expanding aliases (#280).
  • Fixed leaking exception filters.
  • Clearing the screen doesn't leave artefacts behind.

v0.4.4

• Completing .. behaves more like Bash (#277).
• Escape from yes/no question when Ctrl+C is pressed.
• Valid XP executables (#278, #289).
• Fixed n-th argument yank not working as expected (#254).
• Fixed prompt colours sometimes not working (#279, #286).
• Fixed '!0' causing Clink to crash.
• Save/restore cursor position in case Readline moves it.

v0.4.3

• Localised Y/N when auto-answering 'terminate?' prompt.
• $* would early out if there was no arguments.
• Disable ANSI code support if third party provides it.
• Installer can now set %CLINK_DIR% to install location.
• Improved output from 'clink set'.
• Support for Windows 10 Technical Preview.
• Ctrl-L now scrolls last line to the top of the window rather than clearing.
• New option to control how newline characters are pasted to the line.
• New options to control history;
  • 'history_file_lines' - maximum lines saved to disk.
  • 'history_ignore_space' - ignore lines prefixed with whitespace.
  • 'history_dupe_mode' - how duplicate entries are handled.
  • 'history_io' - load/save history from disk every line.
• Fixed nonfunctional numpad keys.
• Fixed missing WINCH signals if other processes resize the buffer.
• Support Alt codes sent from Conhost.

v0.4.2

• Prompt colouring no longer requires third party ANSI code utility.
• Override settings with environment variables prefixed with 'clink'.
• Ctrl-PgUp goes up a directory.
• Updated Go completions (by matrixik).
• Arguments to clink.arg.new_parser() now initialise parser's flags/args (from vladimir-kotikov).
• New clink.arg.add_flags() and clink.arg.add_arguments() functions.
• Removed footer and Alt-H tip for more succinct stdout output.
• Bug fixes;
  • Windows XP works again.
  • Fixed race condition in lua_execute().

v0.4.1

• Bug fixes;
  • Various Unicode fixes causing corrupt environment variables.
  • Fixed thread resume/suspend causing rare system-wide deadlock.
  • Fixed incorrect translation of suffixed slash when completing flags.
• Add --nolog argument to disable file logging. Fix #187 Fix #154
• Added missing escape sequences from doskey emulation.
• Reinstated unix-kill-line key binding.
• Mapped PgUp/Down to search history using line typed so far.
• Added documentation covering escape codes for special keys.
• Added support for Windows' AltGr substitute Ctrl-Alt.
• Support for Readline's 'menu' style completion (see docs).

v0.4

• New features;
  • Better 'clink.arg' API. Easier, more intuitive, and more powerful.
  • Whitespace prefix skips exec matching.
  • Added a 'set' verb to easily change settings from the command line.
  • Basic support for a shells other than cmd.exe.
  • Completion for Go (contributed by Dobroslaw Zybort).
  • Setting 'exec_match_style' to -1 disables it entirely.
  • Make history persistence optional.
  • Alias/doskey completion.
  • Very basic support for Powershell.
  • View cmd.exe's autorun entry without needing admin rights.
• New key bindings;
  • Ctrl-Alt-C : Copy command line to the clipboard.
  • Ctrl-Alt-E : Expand environment variable under cursor.
  • Ctrl-Alt-U : 'up directory' (formerly Shift-Up).
  • Ctrl-U : Adds '..' to the command line.
  • Alt-H : Shows active keymap's key bindings.
• New Lua functions;
  • clink.execute().
  • clink.get_host_process().
  • clink.match_files().
  • clink.match_words().
  • clink.get_console_aliases().
• Lots of bug fixes, including;
  • Better command extraction.
  • Fixed cmd.exe command paging and Ctrl-C/Ctrl-Break handling.
  • Multiple locale fixes.
  • Use localised text for 'Terminate batch job?' prompt.

v0.3

• Automatic answering of cmd.exe's 'Terminate batch script?' prompt.
• Coloured prompts (requires ANSICON or ConEmu).
• Added Shift-Up keyboard shortcut to automatically execute 'cd ..'
• Mapped Ctrl-Z to undo, Microsoft style.
• Improved integration of Readline;
  • New input handling code (Ctrl-Alt combos now work).
  • An implementation of the Termcap library.
  • Fully functional Vi-mode support.
  • Support for resizable consoles.
  • Line wrapping now works correctly (issue 50).
• Adjustable executable match style (issue 65).
• Improved environment variable completion.
• Added settings file to customise Clink.
• New Lua features and functions;
  • Matches can now be filtered in Lua before they are display.
  • clink.quote_split().
  • clink.arg.node_merge().
  • clink.get_screen_info() (issue 71).
  • clink.split() (for splitting strings).
  • clink.chdir().
  • clink.get_cwd().
  • Functions to query Clink's settings.
• New command line options;
  • '--profile ' to override default profile directory.
  • '--nohostcheck' disables verification that host is cmd.exe.
  • '--pid' specifies the process to inject into.
• Update Mercurial completion (issue 73).
• Start menu shortcut starts in USERPROFILE, like cmd.exe
• Zip distribution is now portable.

v0.2.1

• The .history file now merges multiple sessions together.
• Fixed missing y/n, pause, and other prompts.
• Fixed segfault in loader executable.
• Better ConEmu compatibility.

v0.2

• Basic argument completion for 'git', 'hg', 'svn', and 'p4'.
• Traditional Bash clear screen ('Ctrl-L') and exit shortcuts ('Ctrl-D').
• Scrollable command window using 'PgUp'/'PgDown' keys.
• Doskey support.
• Automatic quoting of file names with spaces.
• Scriptable custom prompts.
• New argument framework to ease writing context-sensitive match generators.
• History and log file is now saved per-user rather than globally.
• Improved Clink's command line interface ('clink --help').
• More reliable handling of cmd.exe's autorun entry.
• General improvements to executable and directory-command completion.
• Symbolic link support.
• Documentation.
• Windows 8 support.
• Improved hooking so Clink can be shared with other thirdparty utilities that also hook cmd.exe (ConEmu, ANSICon, etc.).

v0.1.1

• Fixed AltGr+ on international keyboards.
• Fixed broken completion when directories have a '-' in their name (Mark Hammond)
• The check for single match scenarios now correctly handles case-insensitivity.

v0.1

• Initial release.

License

Clink is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3.

Credits

Clink

Clink was originally built by Martin Ridgers (https://github.com/mridgers/clink).
Copyright (c) 2012-2018 by Martin Ridgers.

Clink has been forked and renovated by Christopher Antos (https://github.com/chrisant996/clink).
Portions Copyright (c) 2020 by Christopher Antos.

Libraries

GNU Readline library version 8.0 (https://tiswww.case.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html).
GNU Readline is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3.

Lua 5.2 (https://www.lua.org).

getopt library.
Copyright (c) 1997 Gregory Pietsch, placed in the public domain.

Detours library version 4.0.1 (https://github.com/microsoft/detours).
Copyright (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Licensed under the MIT license.

Clink documentation embeds the highlight.js library (https://highlightjs.org).
Highlight.js is released under the BSD License.