How to Attach a C Program executable to a Keyboard Key

Question

OS: GNU/Linux

I have a program: hello.c

Executable: hello

Required:

The executable "hello" is not running.

I press Key "F1".

The executable "hello" automatically runs & produces the ouput (if any).

Please guide me on how to achieve this.

Answer 1

See https://stackoverflow.com/q/4200800/477035

You can determine the character sequence emitted by a key by pressing Ctrl-v at the command line, then pressing the key you're interested in. On my system for F12, I get ^[[24~. The ^[ represents Esc. Different types of terminals or terminal emulators can emit different codes for the same key.

At a Bash prompt you can enter a command like this to enable the key macro so you can try it out.

bind '"\e[24~":"foobar"'

Now, when you press F12, you'll get "foobar" on the command line ready for further editing. If you wanted a keystroke to enter a command immediately, you can add a newline:

bind '"\e[24~":"pwd\n"'

The man page for bash contains this

   bind [-m keymap] -x keyseq:shell-command
   bind [-m keymap] keyseq:function-name

If your shell is not bash, I suggest scrutinizing the man page for your preferred shell for equivalent capability.