Unexpected text is inserted into the buffer after running shell command

[voidcontext]

Summary

After running certain shell commands text like tty-cmd{"ok": true, "data": "37"}\ is inserted into the current buffer. It seems like data sometimes contains the output of the intermediate commands that are piped into another. Unfortunately I don't have a minimally reproducible example, but there's one thing that seems to be common, the scripts that are causing this, all executed kitty remote commands under the hood.

Reproduction Steps

I tried this:

1. hx

I expected this to happen:

Instead, this happened:

Helix log

~/.cache/helix/helix.log

please provide a copy of `~/.cache/helix/helix.log` here if possible, you may need to redact some of the lines

Platform

macOS

Terminal Emulator

kitty terminal

Helix Version

helix 23.05

[the-mikedavis]

Can you give some examples of commands that do this? Without a reproduction case this is very difficult to debug

[voidcontext]

So, I did a bit of testing, and the easiest way to trigger this behaviour is this

1. open kitty terminal (with remote commands enabled)
2. run helix
3. in helix run :sh kitty @ ls

This won't give any usual output in the popup (?) window, but instead inserts this into the scratch buffer:

lumns\": 192,\n            \"cwd\": \"/Users/gaborpihaj\",\n            \"env\": {},\n            \"foreground_processes\": [\n              {\n                \"cmdline\": [\n                  \"kitten\",\n                  \"@\",\n                  \"ls\"\n                ],\n                \"cwd\": \"/Users/gaborpihaj\",\n                \"pid\": 5857\n              },\n              {\n                \"cmdline\": [\n                  \"/etc/profiles/per-user/gaborpihaj/bin/hx\"\n                ],\n                \"cwd\": \"/Users/gaborpihaj\",\n                \"pid\": 5852\n              }\n            ],\n            \"id\": 1,\n            \"is_active\": true,\n            \"is_focused\": true,\n            \"is_self\": true,\n            \"lines\": 44,\n            \"pid\": 4833,\n            \"title\": \"hx\"\n          }\n        ]\n      }\n    ],\n    \"wm_class\": \"kitty\",\n    \"wm_name\": \"kitty\"\n  }\n]"}\

This looks like the partial output of the kitty @ ls command. The result is the same even if the kitty @ ls command is wrapped in a bash script, or when it's output is redirected into a file:

❯ cat test-kitty.sh 
#!/usr/bin/env bash

kitty @ ls > kitty.log
❯ export PATH=.:$PATH
❯ hx

Then :sh test-kitty.sh inserts the same text into the buffer, and kitty.log is actually empty.

Another examples

• :sh kitty @ focus-tab inserts tty-cmd{"ok":·true}\
• :sh kitty @ set-window-title foobar doesn't insert anything, only a Command succeeded message is displayed.

[voidcontext]

The previous tests were using kitty 0.28.1, with the latest version (0.30.1), the behaviour is slightly different:

• :sh kitty @ ls still inserts the text, but the output is also displayed
• :sh test-kitty.sh behaves the same way

[kovidgoyal]

Either setup a unix socket for kitty remote control or make sure helix is not doing any I/O to the tty while kitten @ is running, because kitten @ does I/O to the tty in the absence of a remote control socket.

[voidcontext]

Using a unix socket solved the issue, thanks for the help and the explanation!