GNU screen: how to resume the screen session reliably

Here's a script that should work for you.

#!/bin/bash

function chooser {

    echo
    echo "I found the following screen sessions: "
    echo

    pcount=0

    # 
    # find the session dir
    #
    sessdir=$( screen -ls | egrep 'Socket' | awk '{print $NF}' | sed -e 's/\.$//' )

    #
    # enumerate existing sessions, and add them to the plist() array.
    #
    for screen in $( find $sessdir -type p ); do
            pcount=$((pcount+1))
            pname=$( basename $screen )
            pdate=$( ls -latr $screen | awk '{print "( "$6" "$7" "$8" )"}')
            plist[$pcount]=${pname}
            echo "  [$pcount]       $pname   $pdate"
    done

    echo
    echo -n "Please select a session to reconnect to: "
    read choice

    # 
    # if the selected choice doesn't exist, recycle the chooser.
    #
    if [ -z ${plist[$choice]} ]; then
            echo
            echo "Your choice [$choice] is invalid.  Please try again."
            echo
            sleep 1
            chooser
    else
            screen -r -d ${plist[$choice]}
    fi

}

#
# the chooser function does all the work
#
chooser

I didn't distinguish between sessions that are currently attached or detached, so you may have to do that yourself if it matters to you.

I had the same issue when running:

git clone https://github.com/jwiegley/git-scripts.git
cd git-scripts
perl git-forest 

I used this as my test. Basically, you should get nice lines is you have utf8 set properly. If not you will get ugly boxes or characters.

The solution is that you need to set LC_ALL to en_US.UTF-8 BEFORE you start a new screen session. I tired doing it after creating the screen session and had no luck.

Here are the step i followed to get this going:

1) Run locale to view the current setup. I got this (which explains why i was having issues:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="C"
LC_NUMERIC="C"
LC_TIME="C"
LC_COLLATE="C"
LC_MONETARY="C"
LC_MESSAGES="C"
LC_PAPER="C"
LC_NAME="C"
LC_ADDRESS="C"
LC_TELEPHONE="C"
LC_MEASUREMENT="C"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="C"
LC_ALL=C

2) Before creating a new screen session, you need to redefine LC_ALL to en_US.UTF-8

if you are using csh shell

setenv LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8

if you are using bash shell

export LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8"

3) Verify LC_ALL was set properly, by running locale again:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

4) Now run a new screen session and run the git-forest test and you should see nice lines