Terminal Polyglot

This extension provides a set of commands for sending text to an integrated terminal specific to the programming language of the current file (or code fence). It associates each file with a language-specific terminal instance: any command you issue through the extension is sent to that terminal.

The extension allows for multiple terminals per language, and persistent terminal sessions via tmux or screen. If multiple terminals are present for a given language, text sent from a file will be sent to the last terminal used for that file.

The commands include:

• Open an existing terminal specific to the language of the current file or code fence (default key Ctrl+'). If no terminal exists for that language, a new one is created.
• Open a new terminal specific to the language of the current file (default key Ctrl+Shift'). A new REPL is launched.
• Cycle through all terminals for a specific language (command Terminal Polyglot: Next Terminal and Termianl Polyglot: Previous Terminal)
• Open the Nth language-specific terminal, creating it if it does not exist (command Terminal Polyglot: Open Terminal...)
• Send lines of code to the language-specific terminal (default key Ctrl+Shift+Enter), opening the terminal and launching a REPL for that language if necessary.
• Send a command to change the directory to the current file's location (command Terminal Polyglot: Change Directory)
• Send a command to run the entire file (command Terminal Polyglot: Run File).
• Change directory to file location in a shell (command Terminal Polyglot: Change Shell Directory)
• Send / select code inside a code fence
• Move to / select the next / previous code fence
• Send an arbitrary command to the terminal (see details below)

The Open Terminal... command can also determine the terminal to open using an index argument. For example:

{
    "command": "terminal-polyglot.open-terminal-N",
    "args": { "index": 2 },
    "key": "shift+cmd+2",
    "when": "editorTextFocus"
}

The command terminal-polyglot.send-command must be passed the argument cmd, and can be used in a keybinding to send any command you want to the terminal. It has two available wild cards:

• %file%: Which will be replaced with the currently active file
• %worksapce%: Which will be replaced with the currently active workspace folder

{
  "command": "terminal-polyglot.send-command",
  "args": { "cmd": "foobar(\"%file%\")" },
  "when": "editorLangId == 'javascript'"
}

Extension Settings

For each language there are at least three settings you probably want to specify.

• launchCommand: the command to start a REPL from the shell
• runCommand: the command to run a file in the REPL
• changeDirecetoryCommand: the command to change directories in the REPL

The run and change direcetory commands need to use a wildcard character, "%", which will be replaced with an appropriate file or directory. To insert a literal "%" character in the command, just use "%%".

There are several optional settings:

• bracketedPasteMode - defaults to false; allows special escape characters to be sent to the terminal; some REPLs drop or alter text when this mode is not set to true (e.g. ipython).
• sendTextBlockCommand - defaults to "%"; allows you to wrap code send via the send-text-block command with extra code. This allows a block sent in this way to differ in how it is run or displayed in the REPL.
• codeFenceSyntax - some langauges (e.g. markdown) can contain code from another language; you can tell terminal polyglot to use a terminal for the embedded language by specifying a regex that parses the relevant code fence syntax. This setting should contain an array with two strings. These represent the regex for the starting and ending of a code fence. The first regex should have a named group called "lang" that serves as the langauge indentifier for this block of code. Any time the selected text is completely contained within a code fence, commands to send that text will be sent to the embedded language.

As an example, here are the default settings.

"[python]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "ipython",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": "%%run \"%\"",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "%%cd \"%\"",
  "terminal-polyglot.bracketedPasteMode": true
},
"[clojure]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "clojure",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": "(load-file \"%\")",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": ""
},
"[julia]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "julia",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": "include(\"%\")",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "cd(\"%\")",
  "terminal-polyglot.bracketedPasteMode": true,
  "termianl-polyglot.sendTextBlockCommand": "begin; %; end"
},
"[ruby]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "irb",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": "load '%'",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "Dir.chdir('%')"
},
"[r]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "R",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": "source(\"%\")",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "setwd(\"%\")"
},
"[matlab]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "matlab -nodesktop -nosplash",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": "run '%'",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "cd '%'"
},
"[typescript]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "ts-node",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": ".load \"%\"",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "process.chdir(\"%\")",
  "terminal-polyglot.bracketedPasteMode": true
},
"[javascript]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "node",
  "terminal-polyglot.runCommand": ".load \"%\"",
  "terminal-polyglot.changeDirectoryCommand": "process.chdir(\"%\")",
  "terminal-polyglot.bracketedPasteMode": true
}
"[markdown]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.codeFenceSyntax": [
     "^```(\\{\\.?)?(?<lang>\\w*)?(.*\\})?\\s*$",
     "^```\\s*$"
   ]
},

If you have additional languages you'd like included in the default settings please file an issue or create a PR.

Platform specific paste mode

Bracketed paste mode can be specified in a platform specific way if necessary. This is done as follows.

"bracketedPasteMode": {"darwin": true, "linux": true, "win32": false}

Windows does not always handle bracketed paste mode well.

Persistent terminal sessions

When present, a wildcard in launch is replaced with the name of the workspace and terminal. This lets you create persistent terminal sessions using this name. For example, to use tmux to maintain your terminal state, you could use the following settings:

"[python]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' ipython"
},
"[clojure]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' clojure"
},
"[julia]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' julia"
},
"[ruby]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' irb"
},
"[r]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' R"
},
"[matlab]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' matlab -nodesktop -nosplash"
},
"[typescript]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' ts-node"
},
"[javascript]": {
  "terminal-polyglot.launchCommand": "tmux new-session -A -s '%' node"
}

Status

I use this extension on daily basis, so it should be working well. Please feel free to report any issues on the github repository.

There is a known issue where tab characters are not properly sent to the terminal on windows.