SYNOPSIS
herbstclient [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS …]
herbstclient [OPTIONS] [--wait|--idle] [FILTER …]
DESCRIPTION
Sends a COMMAND with its (optional) arguments ARGS to a running herbstluftwm(1) instance via Xlib. If COMMAND has an output, it is printed by herbstclient. If output does not end with a newline, then a newline is added to improve readability.
See herbstluftwm(1) for a list of available COMMANDs and their ARGS.
If --wait or --idle is passed, then it waits for hooks from herbstluftwm. The hook is printed, if it matches the optional FILTER. FILTERs are regular expressions. For a list of available hooks see herbstluftwm(1).
OPTIONS
- -n, --no-newline
-
Do not print a newline if output does not end with a newline.
- -0, --print0
-
Use the null character as delimiter between the output of hooks.
- -l, --last-arg
-
When using -i or -w, only print the last argument of the hook.
- -i, --idle
-
Wait for hooks instead of executing commands.
- -w, --wait
-
Same as --idle but exit after first --count hooks.
- -c, --count COUNT
-
Let --wait exit after COUNT hooks were received and printed. The default COUNT is 1.
- -q, --quiet
-
Do not print error messages if herbstclient cannot connect to the running herbstluftwm instance.
- -v, --version
-
Print the herbstclient version. To get the herbstluftwm version, use herbstclient version.
- -h, --help
-
Print the herbstclient usage with its command line options.
- --binary-pipe
-
Run multiple commands via a binary interface. The protocol is described in the BINARY PIPE section below.
BINARY PIPE
When --binary-pipe is passed, a binary communication channel to herbstluftwm is established such that multiple commands can be run through a single herbstclient instance. Both stdin and stdout are in binary mode, whereas the stderr channel remains text mode. The interface consists of null-byte terminated UTF-8 text tokens. The following token sequences are supported on stdin, where 0 denotes a null-byte:
-
ARG
0 T 0 pushes the text token T to the next command to be run. -
RUN
0 runs the command (i.e. sends it to herbstluftwm). -
After writing RUN and the nullbyte to herbstclient’s stdin, do not forget to flush!
On stdout, null-byte separated key-value pairs are printed, that is, the output will always be a sequence of the format KEY 0 VALUE 0. The protocol may be extended in the future, but will always stick to the key-value-format.
-
STDOUT
0 TEXT 0 means that the stdout of the recently executed command is TEXT -
STDERR
0 TEXT 0 means that the stderr of the recently executed command is TEXT -
STATUS
0 N 0 means that the exit status of the recently executed command is the integer N
Whenever herbstluftwm quits or when the EOF of stdin is reached, then the binary pipe also closes and herbstclient exits.
Example:
printf 'ARG\0echo\0ARG\0hello world\0RUN\0ARG\0get_attr\0ARG\0tags.count\0RUN\0' \
| herbstclient --binary-pipe \
| hexdump -C
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
- DISPLAY
-
Specifies the DISPLAY to use, i.e. where herbstluftwm(1) is running.
EXIT STATUS
Returns the exit status of the COMMAND execution in herbstluftwm(1) server.
- 0
-
Success.
- other
-
Failure. See herbstluftwm(1) for a list of error codes.
BUGS
See the herbstluftwm Github issues: https://github.com/herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm/issues
COMMUNITY
Feel free to join the IRC channel #herbstluftwm on irc.libera.chat.
AUTHOR
herbstclient was written by Thorsten Wißmann. All contributors are listed in the herbstluftwm distribution AUTHORS file.
RESOURCES
Homepage: http://herbstluftwm.org
Github page: http://github.com/herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm
Patch submission and bug reporting:
hlwm@lists.herbstluftwm.org
COPYING
Copyright 2011-2020 Thorsten Wißmann. All rights reserved.
This software is licensed under the "Simplified BSD License". See LICENSE for details.