However, I also like to use a huge pager in fvwm2, and just leave terminals open a long time. This means I don't have to log in and out again and again throughout a workday; instead I can just leave terminals open on the common hosts, and reuse those. This usually makes a day a little more productive.

The combination wasn't ideal - using script(1) and not logging out much - because although I was dating my script(1) logs, they were dated solely by the start date. Yes, I modified my PS1 (shell) prompts to give a timestamp, but that's not quite as useful when you have thousands of (potentially compressed) tty log files you want to look through quickly.

So I wrote pypty, which is a reimplementation of script(1) with a little more functionality thrown in. It should be a drop in replacement for traditional use (right down to interoperating with scriptreplay(1)), and being only slightly slower if you use pypy.

The main benefit at this time is that it has a -d option implementing a "dated files" mode. In this mode:

• Every time a new day starts, your old sessions will start a new file. Or more precisely, every time you use a terminal on a new day, a new dated file will be started. This means that your filenames accurately reflect what day something happened.
• Files don't just have a 2008/06/01 directory prefix, for example. They also have two random strings appended to them - one is for the terminal, and one is for the day. This way, if you're hot on the trail of finding a missing detail, but suddenly discover it's in the next day's file from the same session, you have something to key on in your search rather than having to start hunting again.
• -t output no longer goes to stderr in dated files mode. Instead, if your tty output is going to 2008/06/01/typescript-025fxqgjWXLW-7722SdDHUBxl, then your timing data will go to 2008/06/01/typescript-025fxqgjWXLW-7722SdDHUBxl.timing. This means that errors from pypty (if any) won't get mixed up with your timing data, making said errors less likely to be missed until later.

Future enhancements:

• Another problem with script(1) that has bothered me a while, is that when I'm replaying a log using scriptreplay or my script-replay program, things don't look quite right unless the size of the terminal emulator I'm replaying with is the same as the size of the terminal emulator the log was captured with. To make matters worse, I'll often resize my terminal emulators during a script(1), so replay requires resizing too.

  To contend with this, we could probably have another file analogous to today's .timing file, that would have just terminal resize data. We could then either have a automatically-resized GUI for replaying logs, or just ask the user to stretch their terminal as big as it'll go at the beginning and resize to whatever subregion will work best for a given point in the log.

• I don't know, maybe some expect-like functionality - which could be used for, among other things, keyboard macros? Then again, maybe not.

The usage message looks like:

$ ./pypty -h
Usage: ./pypty [file]
        -a           Append the output to file or typescript, retaining the prior contents
        -c command
        -f           Flush output after each write.
        -q           Be quiet.
        -d           Use dated files.
        -t           Output timing data
                     In dated mode, using a .timing file.
                     In non-dated mode, use standard error.
        --verbosity levelno
        -v
        --help

Example usage looks like:

$ ./pypty -d
Pypty started, file is 2008/06/01/typescript-1ZVUCW9Pvdnl-SXtwRhH9WEDZ
dstromberg-desktop-dstromberg:~/public_html/pypty/pypty-1.00 i486-pc-linux-gnu 24546 - above cmd done 2008 Sun Jun 01 01:21 PM

$ pwd
/home/dstromberg/public_html/pypty/pypty-1.00
dstromberg-desktop-dstromberg:~/public_html/pypty/pypty-1.00 i486-pc-linux-gnu 24546 - above cmd done 2008 Sun Jun 01 01:21 PM

$ Pypty finished, file was 2008/06/01/typescript-1ZVUCW9Pvdnl-SXtwRhH9WEDZ
...To be continued

Pypty started, file is 2008/06/02/typescript-1ZVUCW9Pvdnl-Hp8cV4ZpH06V
ls
2008  COPYING  pypty
dstromberg-desktop-dstromberg:~/public_html/pypty/pypty-1.00 i486-pc-linux-gnu 24546 - above cmd done 2008 Mon Jun 02 05:51 PM

$ exit
Pypty finished, file was 2008/06/02/typescript-1ZVUCW9Pvdnl-Hp8cV4ZpH06V

When using pypty, I recommend using $PS1 and $PS0 to punctuate your commands with before and after datestamps.

It just lets you walk through a file, forward and back, a character or line at a time. It doesn't require a special timing file - script(1) timing files often being rather large compared to the tty logs themselves.

It's a little primitive, but I've found it functional.

It should work fine with both script(1) typescript's and pypty typescript's.

It has a curses interface as well as a gi.repository.Gtk interface; it requires CPython 3.x.

You can e-mail the author with questions or comments: