[SOLVED] How do I run a key press as a command?

[urukrama]

Is btnx what you are looking for?

No, but thank you. As far as i can tell, btnx can assign any keystroke or command to any button of your mouse, but that is not what I want (though some of the other posters seem to, though).

I want an application that I can use to simulate a key press at the command line. So that nameoftheapp keycode (or whatever form the command takes) equals pressing the key that has that keycode.

I was hoping something like that would exist. What if you have a script that needs some sort of confirmation from the command line (done automatically, without you pressing that key)?

I'd like to use this thing -- once I find it! -- to trigger certain actions of applications that only run by pressing a key assigned to it globally.

[Gordy]

Your heading for a mass of problems when you do this.. You will learn soon what I mean...

[forrestcupp]

Why not just make a bash script and echo the letter? For the letter Y,

#!/bin/bash
echo Y

Then just save the file as whatever you want and run it like a command. You could even make a link to it in your panel or something so that if you click that icon, it will echo the letter Y to the terminal.

That's about as simple as it gets.

[urukrama]

Thanks forrestcupp. That looks very simple. I'll try it out later, but would this work with something like ScrollLock, PrintScreen, Ctrl, Delete, etc.?

[napsilan]

I don't know the exact details but I thought this was done using something like

echo KEY > /dev/keyboard

or I could be imagining things.

[ugm6hr]

I was looking for something that would simulate repeated keystrokes in order to turn off my power saving screen settings when I watch films.

But doesn't echo display text, rather than simulating key presses?

[ReiKn]

I was hoping something like that would exist. What if you have a script that needs some sort of confirmation from the command line (done automatically, without you pressing that key)?

In bash scripts you can do something like this:

cat  <<+                                                                        
Input for program "cat" here between the plus-signs.                                                                       
+

And now it gives automatically the input between plus signs to the program before the <<

This way you can give automatically input to programs which ask for input during use.

[Namtabmai]

Try xkbevd.

E.g.

/usr/bin/xvkbd -xsendevent -text "\[Alt_L]\[Left]"

Will send the Alt+Left key combination.

[urukrama]

Try xkbevd.

Thank you. This is interesting, but this only works (as far as I can tell) to send text to the focussed windows. That is what the man pages said, and that is how it worked for me.

But I want to send a (global) key press that triggers a command of an application. Xvkbd doesn't help with that, it seems.

(I had xkbevd installed, but needed to install xvkbd separately, btw)

[urukrama]

Sorry to bring this up again, but I haven't had any luck so far. I have tried all the suggestions, but nothing did what I wanted (I couldn't quite grasp what ReiKn and napsilan suggested, though).

To clarify why I want to achieve this, I'll give an example of why I want to use a command to simulate a keypress. When running, tilda is only shown when a particular key is pressed (F1) by default. I would like to bind that to a mouse action in Openbox or Pekwm, but I can only bind commands (or Openbox and Pekwm actions) to mouse actions in those window managers. That is why I would like to simulate a keypress.

The keys I am interested in are not the general letters or numbers, but things like F1-F12, Scroll_Lock, Print_Screen, etc.

So, any further suggestions?