Re: [screen-devel] description of -S and -p semantics in man page seems wrong

[Chris Jones]

On Sat, May 26, 2012 at 06:32:03PM EDT, Britton Kerin wrote:

> I wanted to create a screen socket with a specific name, and
> later be able to kill that particular window.  I create the window like
> this:
> 
>      screen -S arduino /dev/ttyACM0
> 
> I expected to be able to kill it like this:
> 
>      screen -p arduino -X kill
> 
> But this doesn't work, all that happens is I get an inverted text
> message at the bottom of the window like this:
> 
>      -X: kill: window required
> 
> After some google I find that this works:
> 
>      screen -S arduino -X kill

> Here is the description of the -S option in the man page:
> 
>        -S sessionname 
>
>           When  creating a new session, this option can be
>           used to specify a meaningful name for the session. This name
>           identifies the  session for  "screen  -list"  and  "screen -r"
>           actions. It substitutes the default [tty.host] suffix.

> Here is the description of the -p option:
> 
>        -p number_or_name 

>           Preselect a window. This is useful when you
>           want to reattach to  a specific  window or you want to send
>           a command via the "-X" option to a specific window. As with
>           screens select command, "-" selects the  blank  window.  As
>           a special case for reattach, "=" brings up the windowlist on
>           the blank window.

> So you can see why I want to use -p, not -S.  I think its still worth
> keeping the man page up to date despite google.  I don't know how git
> works for this project or what the true semantics of -S and -p options
> are or I could do this myself.  If anyone wants to tell me what these
> option descriptions should be I'll try to get them into git.

First you create a session named ‘arduino’ (the -S flag) and then you
issue a screen command specifying the session name and using the -p and
-X flags, which the manual indicates are meant for _a specific window_
within a screen session, not the session.

From the above commands I can see you created a session named arduino. 

Since screen would start up by default with one window (window zero) and
keeping in mind that screen exits when the last window is killed, you
could try:

| % screen -S arduino -p 0 -X kill

My understanding is that in the manual screen's terminology regarding
windows and sessions is that you can create one or more ‘sessions’
(~screen processes as seen by the OS), each one with one or more
screen ‘windows’ (or panes.. viewports.. etc.)

CJ

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