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REPL started with replServer doesn't persist history #5730
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FWIW I would expect programmatic REPLs to have to opt-in as far as saving history goes.
@victorbjelkholm what if you pass
terminal: truein the REPL options? Looking at the code, it looks like that causes the history to be setup.Ah, yea that is only for the internal REPL, sorry.
@cjihrig saving history in general for programmatic repl or that specific snippet of code? (https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/lib/internal/repl.js#L58-L61)
Seems like one option would be to use the relatively small library
repl.history(https://github.com/tmpvar/repl.history) but I would much rather have it in node vanilla.I meant that specific snippet of code that you linked to. It's exported at the top of that file as
createInternalRepl(). It looks like it might not be supported for the programmatic REPL at this time.Imo this is kind of up to the implementor. Maybe we can have it as an option? But it would be a very significant change the programatic API.
How big of a change is it really? The
createInternalRepl()function just uses a boolean (an odd one, if you ask me[1]) to determine whether or not to callsetupHistory(). It seems to me that this function could easily be moved to the public facingrepl.js, and triggered on a similar, but probably more aptly named option. E.g.option.history = '/path/to/file.txt'.It's minor, but there is already a little bleed over from internal to external. I don't see a disadvantage to moving history management into the public API and simply make the
createInternalReplfunction much simpler - setting up command line defaults and such.Edit: This is a long way of saying, I'd be willing to submit a PR for this change if there's any chance of it being accepted.
[1] The fact that writing history is a side effect of setting
opts.terminal = trueseems strange, but I suspect it's a vestige of the fact that thiscreateInternalReplis secret and only ever used bynode.jsat startup.Reacted by Victor Bjelkholm, Miguel Molina, Arijit Dasgupta, Heath Morrison, Adrien Becchis and Martin LiptákGiven that we ultimately decided not to merge the PR for this, I'm going to close it. Feel free to reopen if there is demonstrated need.
Just chiming in after some research but late to the party, I would definitely use this if it were available in the stdlib ^^ :)
For others who find this issue:
- Calling
repl.startis a no-go because it misses history - Calling
node -r ./noderc.jsis a no-go becauserepl.replis unavailablerequire('repl').replis undefined under-r, even for interactive sessions
My work-around is to have tmux start node and send it arbitrary initialization code:
$ cat bin/repl #!/bin/sh file="$HOME/path/to/my/noderc.js" stty -echo tmux send-keys 'node; stty echo' C-m ".load $file" C-m
UPDATE:
New hack: Use a command-line flag to require a module that configures the global object, and sets a callback to configure the repl once it's been initialized.
~ $ grep repl .bashrc alias repl='node --use-strict -r ~/home/git/env/etc/noderc.js' ~ $ cat ~/home/git/env/etc/noderc.js setTimeout(() => global.repl.repl.ignoreUndefined = true, 1000); global.jenny = [8, 6, 7, 5, 3, 0, 9];
This has the advantage of not adding the rc file contents to .node_repl_history every time you start a REPL.
Reacted by Ryan Foster, Lance Ball, Abbas Mashayekh, Eugen Kuksa and Isaac CambronReacted by Malcolm- Calling
Any examples of how to implement loading command history into the repl that is os- and terminal-independent? I looked at repl.history but don't see how to load that history back into the repl once it loads.
I'd very much like to see this reopened. It's strange that the built-in REPL has this functionality but programmatic REPLs have no access to it and instead depend on hacky workarounds.
Also, the workaround linked above requires extra effort in order to reimplement max history size, so it's at least a little harder than that.
I'm trying to create a REPL via the programmatic library provided by the built-in repl package (https://nodejs.org/api/repl.html).
I'm doing something like this[1]:
And I'm expecting the commands I enter to be preserved if I open the repl once again later. Not finding that this is the case, I have been trying to setting both
NODE_REPL_HISTORYandNODE_REPL_HISTORYby doing something like thisprocess.env.NODE_REPL_HISTORY = 'somepath'. I've tried settingsomethingto relative path, absolute path, a folder, a file, a non-existing file and a already existing file. But in all cases, the history is not persisted.I'm not sure if I found a bug or if I'm doing something wrong but would appreciate any I can get.
[1] In reality I'm doing something bigger, https://github.com/victorbjelkholm/trymodule, but figured a small test-case is better for troubleshooting.