Session files

Anyone who carefulle read the section about the commandline and compared it with the actual output of tm -h/tm --help may have noticed that one thing hasn't been mentioned there - -c <CONFIG>.

That simple option turns out to be big enough to warrant an own chapter - actually seperated into two - and so here goes.

Session files exist in (currently) two different versions, currently named Simple and Extended, and their naming already sets expectations.

File locations

Session files are expected at ${HOME}/.tmux.d and are plain text files. Files with no extension are handled as simple, files with a .cfg as extension as extended session files.

Replacement tokens / tilde and variable expansion

Session files support the expansion of (Shell) variables and one replacement token. They also support tilde extension.

Tilde extension

The LIST command used in session files supports tilde expansion, so ~/ as well as ~username/ is supported syntax.

Variable expansion

Shell variables are expanded in LIST commands and extended session files. Both, $HOME as well as ${HOME} (with/without {}) are supported syntax. Expanding an unset variable will return an empty string.

Replacement token

In addition to shell variables, for historical reasons, tm supports one replacement token for session files. Within session files it is written as ++TMREPLACETM++ and will get replaced with the argument following the session filename on commandline. That is, in tm vm_nfs mail the word mail will be the replacement. Unlike Variable expansion, this also works for the session name.