NAME

vcrtty — try to find a terminal-like name for the current session

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The vcrtty utility examines the current session and tries to find the name of a terminal or something similar that could describe it for tools like vcr(1) that do different things on different terminals. The vcrtty utility tries the following in succession:

*

If the TTY environment variable is set, vcrtty outputs its contents.

*

If the tty(1) command may be executed successfully, vcrtty outputs its result.

*

If the DISPLAY environment variable is set, vcrtty assumes that this is a X session and outputs a “xdesktopN” string after trying to determine which X desktop it is running on; for this purpose, the wmctrl(1) tool is used if available.

*

Otherwise vcrtty does not output anything at all; it is up to the invoking program to decide whether to treat this as an error.

RETURN VALUES

The vcrtty utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

ENVIRONMENT

The vcrtty utility examines the TTY and DISPLAY environment variables as outlined above. Also, the PATH variable may affect its operation when invoking tty(1) or wmctrl(1).

FILES

The vcrtty utility's operation is not directly affected by any files.

EXAMPLES

Well, just do it - output a usable TTY name:

SEE ALSO

tty(1), vcr(1), wmctrl(1)

HISTORY

The vcrtty utility was written by Peter Pentchev in 2011.

AUTHORS

Peter Penchev ⟨roam@ringlet.net⟩