wezterm.GLOBAL

Since: 20220624-141144-bd1b7c5d

Provides global, in-process, in-memory, data storage for json-like variables that persists across config reloads.

wezterm's lua files may be re-loaded and re-evaluated multiple times in different contexts or in different threads. If you'd like to keep track of state that lasts for the lifetime of your wezterm process then you cannot simply use global variables in the lua script.

wezterm.GLOBAL is a special userdata value that acts like a table. Writing to keys will copy the data that you assign into a global in-memory table and allow it to be read back later.

Reads and writes from/to wezterm.GLOBAL are thread-safe but don't currently provide synchronization primitives for managing read-modify-write operations.

The following example shows the number of times that the config has been loaded in the right status bar. Watch it increase when you press the ReloadConfiguration key assignment (CTRL-SHIFT-R):

local wezterm = require 'wezterm'

-- Count how many times the lua config has been loaded
wezterm.GLOBAL.parse_count = (wezterm.GLOBAL.parse_count or 0) + 1

wezterm.on('update-right-status', function(window, pane)
  window:set_right_status('Reloads=' .. tostring(wezterm.GLOBAL.parse_count))
end)

return {}

Note that the reload counter goes up by more than 1 when you reload: that is because the config is evaluated multiple times in different threads as part of safely validating and setting up the configuration.

You may store values with the following types:

• string
• number
• table
• boolean

Attempting to assign other types will raise an error.