All, I'm putting together some glue-ware for a system, and would like to hide the underlying nature of it. It's a bit of software that fits in and around routers / switches etc. and there's a pretty common CLI for those these days, which consists of a hierarchial context-based set of commands, plus completion, e.g. on Cisco, although I suspect everyone is familiar with the concept: client: sh <question mark> server: ip - show IP items server: foo - show Foo items server: bar - show Bar items client: sh f <question mark> server: ver - show foo version server: connections - show foo connections client: sh f c <question mark> server: <cr> - show connection summary server: <int> - show connection detail client: sh f c 3 server: <some stuff> Similarly, for configure mode: client: configure server: ok client: subsystem server(subsystem): ok client: <question mark> server(subsystem): trusted - configure trusted ports server(subsystem): untrusted - configure untrusted ports server(subsystem): map - map from trusted to untrusted client: trust server(subsystem-trusted): ok client: <question mark> server(subsystem-trusted): ip - add a trusted port by IP server(subsystem-trusted): phys - add a trusted physical port server(subsystem-trusted): vlan - add a trusted vlan client: vlan 1 The hiearchial configure mode is mapped onto a hierarchial configuration file, e.g. the above would generate: subsystem trusted vlan 1 ! ! It's main features are: 1) Tab completion and partial -> full conversion 2) Nested modes Relevant to twisted is I want to replace the manhole interactive interpreter. Any such beast exist? -- Regards, Phil +------------------------------------------+ | Phil Mayers | | Network & Infrastructure Group | | Information & Communication Technologies | | Imperial College | +------------------------------------------+