Repline>
a portable readline alternative.

Repline is a pure C library that can be used as readline alternative.

• Small: less than 5k lines and can be compiled as a single C file without any dependencies or configuration (e.g. gcc -c src/repline.c).
• Portable: works on Unix, Windows, and macOS, and relies on a minimal subset of ANSI escape sequences.
• Features: extensive multi-line editing mode, colors, history, completion, unicode, undo/redo, incremental history search, graceful fallback, etc.
• License: MIT.

Enjoy, Daan

Usage

Include the repline header in your C or C++ source:

#include <include/repline.h>

and call rp_readline to get user input with rich editing abilities:

rp_env_t* env = rp_init();
char* input;
while( (input = rp_readline(env,"prompt")) != NULL ) { // ctrl+d or errors return NULL
  printf("you typed:\n%s\n", input); // use the input
  free(input);  
}

See the example for a full example with completion, history, etc.

Run the Example

You can compile and run the example as:

$ gcc -o example -Iinclude test/example.c src/repline.c
$ ./example

or, the Haskell one:

$ ghc -ihaskell test/Example.hs src/repline.c
$ ./test/Example

Build the Library

CMake

Clone the repository and run cmake:

$ git clone https://github.com/daanx/repline
$ cd repline
$ mkdir -p build/release
$ cd build/release
$ cmake ../..
$ cmake --build .

and run the example program:

$ ./example

As a single source

Copy the sources (in include and src) into your project, or add the library as a submodule:

$ git submodule add https://github.com/daanx/repline

and add repline/src/repline.c to your build rules -- no configuration is needed.

Motivation

Repline was created for use in the Koka interactive compiler. This required: pure C (no dependency on a C++ runtime or other libraries), portable (across Linux, macOS, and Windows), unicode support, a BSD-style license, and good functionality for completion and multi-line editing.

Some other libraries that we considered: GNU readline, editline, linenoise, replxx.