process-prompt-pattern: preference variable

Default value: ""

Under Windows NT/2000/XP and later Windows versions, certain process buffer functions like completion, or interpreting compiler error messages, require Epsilon to determine the current directory of the command processor running there. Epsilon does this by examining each prompt from cmd.exe, such as C:\WINNT>. If you've set a different format for the prompt, set this variable to tell Epsilon how to retrieve the directory name from it.

If this variable is nonempty, it must be a regular expression pattern that matches a prompt. The first pair of parentheses (not counting any using the syntax "(?: )") must match the directory portion of the prompt. Epsilon will try to parse the buffer using this pattern starting from the beginning of the last line of the prompt. The pattern may either match from that position forward, or from that position backward (to handle multi-line prompts).

As an example, say you use Cygwin's bash shell and set the PS1 prompt variable to '\u@\h\w\n$ ', producing a two-line prompt, with a user name, an at sign, a machine name, and the current directory on the first line. Set process-prompt-pattern to "@<^wspace>+ (.+)<newline>". This uses the machine name to locate the start of the current directory on the previous line. The default cmd.exe prompt of $P$G could use a pattern of "(.*)%>", which selects all the text on a line before a final > as the directory name.

In non-Windows environments, Epsilon uses a different method to determine the command processor's current directory, so setting this variable is unnecessary.

More info:

The Concurrent Process

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