How to get xinput to identify an inputer device by name with excess whitespace?

debian x11 xrandr xinput touch-screen

5,158

The hexdump shows there's only spaces (20) in the name, but there are also spaces after the second part. So you need to do something like

xinput map-to-output "Weida Hi-Tech                CoolTouchR System           " DP-4

(I hope I counted correctly; if not, please verify the number of spaces yourself).

5,158

Bob Liberatore

I specialize in outside-the-box apps that bend the Android API to its limits to create unique user experiences. I have 5 years of experience working full-time on a math education Android app that has been awarded a SBIR grant from the National Science Foundation.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Bob Liberatore over 1 year
I have a secondary monitor that is a touch screen. I can successfully map the input to the correct screen using xinput map-to-output 12 DP-4.

However, the ID number for the input device is not consistent between boots. The way to fix this is to use the name of the device. However, I have a weird issue:
```
user@DESKTOP-VALMMNL:/etc/init.d$ xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ USB Optical Mouse                         id=9    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Weida Hi-Tech                CoolTouchR System            id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]`
```
As you can see, the input device I need to map (id=12) has a lot of whitespace in its name. Copying and pasting it as displayed (i.e. xinput map-to-output "Weida Hi-Tech CoolTouchR System" DP-4) does not work. hexdump of the names:
- dirkt over 7 years
  
  Maybe there's a tab or end-of-line char in the name? What do you see if you do xinput list --name-only | hexdump -C (you may need to install hexdump)?
- Bob Liberatore over 7 years
  
  @dirkt I did try adding in escaped characters, including tabs, but xinput only seemed to recognize escaped spaces. Putting in \t does not result in a tab. I added a screenshot of the output from the command you suggested.
- Toby Speight over 7 years
  
  Did you include all the trailing spaces in your command? Try xinput --list 'Weida Hi-Tech CoolTouchR System ', since that output shows 11 spaces at the end of the name. (note that not all the spaces are shown here in the comment - you'll probably have to type them - or device=`xinput list --name-only | grep -m1 Weida`\).