Standard ML repeat last command, left arrow?

Question

I am learning standard ML using its interpreter. Sometimes I make typo and just want to repeat the previous command like in Linux shell. However, up arrow will end up with printing special characters on the screen. Sometimes I want to go back left to correct something, left arrow also results in printing special characters.

Does anybody know what is the correct way to do them?

Looks like a duplicate of - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1911861/how-to-fix-the-sml-nj-interactive-system-to-use-arrow-keys — Gangadhar, Apr 07 '12 at 18:52
Excellent! How come I didn't find that at google... Thanks a lot for pointing out, that is awesome! — Alfred Zhong, Apr 07 '12 at 19:14

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 07 '12 at 21:05

I use Moscow ML, but I figure the answer will apply to whichever version you use:

You can achieve what you want by using rlwrap.

I have the following alias set in my .zshrc, which handles it automatically:

alias mosml="rlwrap mosml"

(Substitute mosml for the name of your SML interpreter.)

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered May 23 '12 at 16:55

6

Consider using the program ledit. It allows you to use the arrow keys to visit previous commands.

Example:

ledit mosml

answered May 23 '12 at 16:55

matzahboy

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this is beautiful and works for smlnj and others too - thanks! – charles.fox Aug 19 '17 at 09:58

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 21 '12 at 18:31

If you are going to be doing any serious SML hacking I strongly suggest you use a development environment that allows you to interact with the SML top level environment.

I use Emacs with the SML mode. The beauty here is that in the top window you can code functions and save them to a file. You can then send them to the lower window that holds the Inferior-SML process for compilation. Also the Inferior-SML process has by default a command history.

Standard ML repeat last command, left arrow?

3 Answers3