Re: use current folder name as argument to abitrary command

[Noah Sheppard <nhsheppard@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:59:12AM -0600, Kyle Wheeler wrote:
> IF you could get $my_curdir to work, you could get your wish by 
> constantly re-creating the macro. But that gives me an idea - here's 
> something that should work:
> 
>      folder-hook . "set my_oldrecord=\$record"
>      folder-hook . "set record=^"
>      folder-hook . \
>      macro index,pager "<save-message>$my_archdir/$record<enter>"
>      folder-hook . "set record=\$my_oldrecord"
> 
> This way, we can use the "special" status of $record to force the ^ to 
> be expanded. First, we save the contents of $record into a temporary 
> variable (so we need to escape $record). Then we set $record to ^. 
> Then we rebind the macro so that it's got the correct contents (note 
> we don't want escaping here). Then we restore $record's original 
> value.
Thanks!  This does what I need: gets the name of the current folder in a
variable without messing up $record, and makes my macro work on whatever
the current folder path is.  I modified it slightly so that I get the
current folder path in a variable on its own so I can be free to play
with it further:

    folder-hook . "set my_oldrecord=\$record"
    folder-hook . "set record=^"
    folder-hook . "set my_curdir=\$record"
    folder-hook . "set record=\$my_oldrecord"

The next step is to strip down that name so I have only the folder name,
not the full path.  The best way I can think to do this would be to pass
the full path folder variable to a shell command which will strip that
down, and return the folder name to another variable (or the same one, I
don't care).  I'm stuck at figuring out how to pass a mutt variable to a
shell command.

For testing, my command is:

   folder-hook . "set my_testval=`echo \$my_curdir`"

Now it gets weird.  That very simple command works.  set ?my_testval
returns the full path to the folder.  But, if I make some simple
addition, for example:

   folder-hook . "set my_testval=`echo \$my_curdir | rev`"

then rather than getting the full path to the mail folder, reversed, I
get

   ridruc_ym$
 
which is of course "$my_curdir" in reverse.  Why does the addition of one
simple pipe command make mutt stop interpreting the variable?

Thanks,
-- 
Noah Sheppard
Assistant Computer Resource Manager
Taylor University CSE Department
nsheppar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx