SYNOPSIS

       ah-tty

DESCRIPTION

       ah-tty provides context-sensitive help at a UNIX shell prompt.

       ah-tty  executes  an  inferior  shell,  and watches the output from the
       shell and the input to it from the user carefully, to determine what is
       a prompt, and what is actually a command typed by the user.

       Once  it has determined what the user's command is, it compares it to a
       list of rules to determine what helpful hint to display, if any.

       This isn't making sense, is it? Okay, try this:

       Start ah-tty, then at the shell prompt type "ls ", do not press return.
       Wait  a  moment,  and watch the bottom of the screen.  Now does it make
       sense? Okay then.

       DO NOT set your default shell to ah-tty.  This is not a  shell  in  its
       own  right, just a kind of front-end shell watching thingy. If you want
       this to be your default  shell,  invoke  it  manually  from  the  shell
       prompt, or in your .login or .profile scripts.

       Rules consist of regular expressions, combined with appropriate delays,
       as well as a maximum number of times the hint should  be  displayed  in
       one  session.  However,  any particular hint is only displayed once per
       prompt.

       For details of how to create and modify rules files, see RULES  in  the
       program distribution. If you can create rules files yourself, you don't
       need to use ah-tty :-)

FILES

              /usr/local/share/ah-tty.conf
                     Default system rules file.

              $HOME/.ah-ttyrc
                     Users' own rules files.

ENVIRONMENT

              PSHELL Determines the shell executed by ah-tty

              SHELL  Used if PSHELL is not set.

BUGS

       Does not handle terminal escape sequences, although  any  shell  output
       using  only normal printable ASCII, backspaces and BELL characters will
       be fine. Once it does, we  can  assume  that  it  will  understand  the
       shell's  line-editing  capabilities.  Right  now it will still work, it
       just may not match correctly.