Well now, if y’all are fiddlin’ with that tmux thing, you might wanna know how to send them keys around from one pane to another, right? It ain’t that hard, really. You just gotta remember a few things, and you’ll be set. So, let me tell ya how it’s done, step by step, so it don’t get too complicated.
First off, tmux, that’s the tool we’re talkin’ about here. It’s like a big ol’ toolbox for split screens on your computer. You can open up a bunch of ‘em, and do different things at the same time. Real handy for workin’ with servers or doin’ stuff like that. Now, sometimes you might need to send a command from one of them panes to another one. That’s where the tmux send-keys command comes in.
Now, don’t get spooked by all the fancy talk. It’s real simple. All you gotta do is tell tmux where you want that key sent, like which pane and which window. The basic form looks somethin’ like this:
tmux send-keys -t {session}:{window}.{pane} "your command" C-m
What’s that mean? Well, let me break it down for ya. First, you got the session name, then the window number, and after that, the pane number. That’s how tmux knows which little corner of the screen you want the command to go to. The C-m at the end? That’s just like hittin’ the Enter key, so it knows to run the command.
Let’s say you’ve got a session called Test, and inside that session, there’s a window called Test1, and in that window, you got a bunch of panes. If you want to send a command to the first one, you’d do it like this:
tmux send-keys -t Test:Test1.1 "echo Hello World" C-m
That’ll send the “Hello World” command right to that first pane, and then press Enter for ya. If you got more panes, you can change the number after the dot to 2, 3, and so on.
If you’re like me, you might have a whole bunch of windows and panes, and you need to keep track of where you’re sendin’ things. But don’t worry, tmux’s got your back. You can also use tmux send-keys -t :. This will send a command to whatever pane you got active at the moment. It’s like pointin’ at the right spot and sayin’, “Hey, this is where I want that command to go!”
But what if you got a whole bunch of panes open and you want to send a command to all of ‘em at once? Well, tmux makes that easy, too. You can use tmux send-keys-all-panes, and it’ll send the same command to every pane in the session. Ain’t that neat? Here’s how you’d do it:
tmux send-keys-all-panes "your command" C-m
This’ll save ya time, especially if you got a lot of panes and don’t wanna type the same thing over and over. Just send it all at once, and let tmux do the rest.
Now, if you’re wantin’ to get a little fancier, you can use modifier keys like Ctrl, Alt, or Shift when you’re sendin’ them keys. These are just like regular key presses, but they let you do some extra stuff, like control the system or do special tasks. For example, you could use Ctrl to send commands that affect how tmux behaves, or Alt to open up different menus.
And don’t forget, if you’re in copy mode, you gotta use the -X flag to send a command to tmux. This makes sure it goes into copy mode and starts using the right key tables. Just like when you’re copyin’ and pastin’ stuff around in other programs.
So, what if you wanna send keys to a pane in a different window? Easy! Just put the window number right before the pane, with a dot in between. Like this:
tmux send-keys -t Test:2.1 "echo Good Morning" C-m
This’ll send “Good Morning” to the first pane in window 2 of session “Test.” You can mix and match the numbers however you like to make sure your commands go to the right places.
Well, I reckon that about covers the basics. With this here tmux send-keys command, you can do a whole lotta things—send commands to specific panes, copy stuff around, and even control a whole bunch of panes at once. It’s real handy, and once you get the hang of it, you’ll be doin’ all kinds of things faster than a chicken on a June bug. So, go ahead, give it a try, and see what works best for ya!
Tags：[tmux, send-keys, terminal, key commands, multiple panes, tmux commands, tmux tutorial, session management]
