Kit generate CR line breaks when writing to files

[pomdtr]

When saving the content of the clipboard or the current selection to a file, I get windows-style line breaks:

const clipboardContent = await paste();
const selectedText = await kit.getSelectedText();
const tempfile = `${kit.tempdir()}/input.txt`

if (selectedText) {
  await kit.writeFile(tempfile, selectedText, {flag: 'w', encoding: 'utf-8'})
} else if (clipboardContent) {
  await kit.writeFile(tempfile, clipboardContent,  {flag: 'w', encoding: 'utf-8'})
}

Is there a way to stop this behavior ?

[pomdtr]

In order to obtain the expected linebreaks, I need to use the command tr '\r' '\n'.

Here is the full script:

// Menu: Pipe to Command
// Decription: Manipulate the selected text or clipboard content using the shell
// Author: pomdtr

process.env.PATH = `${process.env.HOME}/.local/bin:/usr/local/bin/:${process.env.PATH}`;
var os = import('os'); os.EOL

function codeblock(text) {
  const triple_backquote = "```";
  return `${triple_backquote}shell\n${text}\n${triple_backquote}`;
}

let command = "";

const clipboardContent = await paste();
const selectedText = await kit.getSelectedText();
const tempfile = `${kit.tempdir()}/input.txt`

if (selectedText) {
  await kit.writeFile(tempfile, selectedText, {flag: 'w', encoding: 'utf-8'})
} else if (clipboardContent) {
  await kit.writeFile(tempfile, clipboardContent,  {flag: 'w', encoding: 'utf-8'})
}

let [stdout, stderr, code] = [null, null, 0];
let panelContent = await kit.readFile(tempfile, {encoding: "utf-8"})

while (true) {
  command = await arg(
    {
      placeholder: "Command:",
      className: "px-2",
      input: command,
    },
    md(codeblock(panelContent))
  );

  if (command) {
    ({stdout, stderr, code} = exec(`tr '\r' '\n' < ${tempfile} | ${command}`))
    panelContent = code == 0 ? stdout : stderr;
  } else {
    panelContent = await kit.readFile(tempfile, {encoding: "utf-8"});
  }

  await copy(panelContent);
}

[johnlindquist]

Thanks for finding this. I dug into what was going on, here's what I found:

Problem

The internal getSelectedText has this line:

  let selectedText = await applescript(
    String.raw`get the clipboard`
  )

The applescript helper is simply a wrapper around a bash command:

  let { stdout, stderr } = exec(
    `osascript -e '${formattedScript}'`,
    options
  )

So at its core, getSelectedText is really just this bash command (you can run this in your terminal):

osascript -e 'get the clipboard'

So if we actually create a file and check for line endings:

osascript -e 'get the clipboard' > ~/.kenv/tmp/testing-line-breaks/test.txt
file ~/.kenv/tmp/testing-line-breaks/test.txt

The result is:
tmp/testing-line-breaks/test.txt: ASCII text, with CRLF, CR line terminators

We don't want CRLF 😬

Quick Solution

"Don't use AppleScript" 😇. I'll just replace:

this:

  let selectedText = await applescript(
    String.raw`get the clipboard`
  )

with this:

let selectedText = await paste() // "paste" is from npm's "clipboardy"

and the problem goes away.

Long-term solution

Later this year, I'll be removing all the AppleScript code in favor of Rust w/ osx bindings and I'll make sure any returned strings have proper line-endings. The plan is to bring Script Kit to Windows and Rust cross-platform bindings should fit the purpose nicely. AppleScript is slow when dealing many OS-level apis (window bounds, displays, running apps, etc) and I'm excited to build much more robust OS-level tools (and keep them cross-platform) with Rust.