How can I get the list of recentf files from bash / cli?

Question

How can I retrieve the list of recent files in bash?

I'd like to get this set of files so I can use it with rofi.

I could manually parse the data file that looks something like:

;;; Automatically generated by ‘recentf’ on Sat Apr 20 13:21:26 2019.

(setq recentf-list
      '(
        "/home/chris/dotfiles/Human-Friendly-Commands/modules/misc.sh"
        "/home/chris/dotfiles/Human-Friendly-Commands/commands.sh"
        "/etc/nixos/chris.nix"
        "/home/chris/fromLaptopt/usbflash/Haskell/HeliumGrape/src/DiscreteOscillators.hs"
        "/home/chris/fromLaptopt/usbflash/Haskell/HeliumGrape/src/MyDebug.hs"
        "/home/chris/Haskell/HeliumGrape/src/Main.hs"
...

But if there is a more idiomatic way that would be ideal.

Answer 1

You can also do this with emacsclient. Here I'm using space to separate file names:

#!/bin/sh

emacsclient -e "(mapconcat #'identity recentf-list \" \")"

thescript | sed 's/\s/\n/g'

Answer 2

 emacs --script t.elisp | sed -r '/^\s*$/d' | sed -n -e '/^"/p' | sed -e 's/"//g'

Not pretty but it works... Had to use sed to remove blank lines, 'tramp entries' (which aren't string(?)) and the quotes..

t.elisp

#!/usr/local/bin/emacs --script
(defun print-if-string (x)
       (cond ((stringp x) (print x))
             (t (error "Invalid argument %s in add-on" x))))
(defun print-elements-of-list (list)
 "Print each element of LIST on a line of its own."
 (while list
   (print-if-string (car list))
   (setq list (cdr list))))
(load "~/.emacs.d/.cache/recentf")
(print-elements-of-list recentf-list)