hanslub42/rlwrap

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

3126 stars · 166 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

rlwrap is a command-line wrapper that uses GNU Readline to add line editing, persistent input history, and user-defined completion to any interactive command. It works on a wide range of Unix-like systems and includes a filter mechanism for custom input/output effects.

Use cases

• add arrow-key editing and history to a REPL that lacks readline
• wrap netcat or other plain commands with command-line editing
• add custom word completion to an interactive program from a word list file
• keep persistent command history across invocations of a tool
• hide and avoid storing passwords typed into wrapped commands

When to choose

• a command shows escape sequences like ^[[D when you press arrow keys
• you want bash-style history recall and CTRL-R search for any interactive program
• you need user-defined completion word lists for a custom shell or REPL

When to avoid

• the target program already has sophisticated terminal handling like fish or fzf
• you need a graphical or non-interactive input solution
• you are on a non-Unix platform without a POSIX terminal environment

Facets

cli-tool · maturity stable

cli developer-tools terminal-ui developer-tools bsd cli cross-platform readline input-editing command-history completion pty-wrapper command-line linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="hanslub42/rlwrap")