IRCAT(1)

💅 ircat — okay bestie, let's talk

So ircat is a User Commands manual page (section 1, iykyk), and it's genuinely one of the most lowkey useful little gremlins in the lirc universe. Let's get into it. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

ircat — prints strings when you press buttons. That's it. That's the whole job. And she ate. 💖

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

ircat [options] <prog>

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

Okay so here's the vibe: this program prints config strings to standard output. That's the main character move. What's it for? Two things, bestie:

• feeding remote-control input into your scripts 🫶
• debugging your .lircrc file (because let's be real, we've all been there 😭)

The argument you hand to the program is the program name, exactly as it shows up in the prog entries inside .lircrc. So like, whatever you named it in there? That's what you pass. No cap.

Now the options, and yes there are only three, she's a minimalist queen 👑

• -h, --help — shows you the usage summary. The "hey what do I do" button.
• -v, --version — shows you the version. The "who even are you" button.
• -c, --config=<file> — sets the config file. Tell her which one to read, bestie.

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🧚 EXAMPLES 🧚

Okay so imagine your .lircrc has this in it:

begin
        prog = myprog
        button = KEY_CHANNELUP
        config = next_file
end

Then you do:

$ ircat myprog

and it will print "next_file" — followed by a newline, don't forget the newline — every single time the button bound to KEY_CHANNELUP gets pressed. Every. Single. Time. It's giving consistent. It's giving reliable. It's giving exactly what it says on the tin. 💜

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• LIRC_SOCKET_PATH — this is the lircd(8) output socket, the one used to retrieve data. And if you don't set it? It defaults to /var/run/lirc/lircd. That's the default, write it down, bestie. 📝

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

The documentation for lirc is maintained as html pages, and they live under html/ in the documentation directory. Go look, it's there, it's waiting for you. 👑

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lowkey reminder: the prog name you pass has to match what's in .lircrc, or she simply will not know what you're talking about and nothing will print. vibe check your config first fr fr 💀

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and that's the whole page!! this was ircat, version 0.10.2, last changed Jan 2017 — she's been iconic for a minute and she's not slowing down 💅✨