I would like to write an Emacs front-end to a server which supports Telnet connections, and I was wondering if there is an idiomatic way of doing this. Specifically, the program will work like this:
- Use the
telnet
function to connect to the server. - Read the output of the telnet command so far, and transform it, and insert it into a buffer. This buffer will be different than the telnet buffer.
- Send commands to the telnet server as the user interactively executes functions
What I don't understand is the following:
- How can I programmatically read what the server is sending in the telnet process? Right now when I use the
telnet
function it creates a new buffer and switches to it, which is great for interactive use, but not for programmatic reading of output. - The same for inputting something to the telnet process: how can I send text to it?
I know that a lot of Emacs packages use the command line to do things, but those commands are, as far as I know, pretty straightforward: you run the command, it gives you some output, and then quits. However, in this case the command keeps working in the background, and I need to read its output and send it input.
Thanks!