whiptail - display dialog boxes from shell scripts
whiptail [ --title title ] [
--backtitle backtitle ] [ --clear ] [
--default-item string ] [ --defaultno ] [ --fb ]
[ --nocancel ] [ --yes-button text ] [
--no-button text ] [ --ok-button text ] [
--cancel-button text ] [ --noitem [ ]
--output-fd fd ] [ --separate-output ] [
--scrolltext ] [ --topleft ] box-options
whiptail is a program that will let you present a variety
of questions or display messages using dialog boxes from a shell script.
Currently, these types of dialog boxes are implemented:
yes/no box, menu box, input box,
message box, text box, info box, checklist
box, radiolist box, gauge box, and password box.
- --clear
- The screen will be cleared to the screen attribute on exit. This
doesn't work in an xterm (and descendants) if alternate screen switching
is enabled, because in that case slang writes to (and clears) an alternate
screen.
- --defaultno
- The dialog box will open with the cursor over the No button.
- --default-item
string
- Set the default item in a menu box. Normally the first item in the box is
the default.
- --fb,
--fullbuttons
- Use full buttons. (By default, whiptail uses compact buttons).
- --nocancel
- The dialog box won't have a Cancel button.
- --yes-button
text
- Set the text of the Yes button.
- --no-button
text
- Set the text of the No button.
- --ok-button
text
- Set the text of the Ok button.
- --cancel-button
text
- Set the text of the Cancel button.
- --noitem
- The menu, checklist and radiolist widgets will display tags only, not the
item strings. The menu widget still needs some items specified, but
checklist and radiolist expect only tag and status.
- --notags
- Don't display tags in the menu, checklist and radiolist widgets.
- --separate-output
- For checklist widgets, output result one line at a time, with no quoting.
This facilitates parsing by another program.
- --output-fd
fd
- Direct output to the given file descriptor. Most whiptail scripts
write to standard error, but error messages may also be written there,
depending on your script.
- --title
title
- Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top of the dialog
box.
- --backtitle
backtitle
- Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the backdrop, at
the top of the screen.
- --scrolltext
- Force the display of a vertical scrollbar.
- --topleft
- Put window in top-left corner.
- -h, --help
- Print a help message and exit.
- -v, --version
- Print version information and exit.
- Box Options
- --yesno text
height width
- A yes/no dialog box of size height rows by width
columns will be displayed. The string specified by text is
displayed inside the dialog box. If this string is too long to be fit in
one line, it will be automatically divided into multiple lines at
appropriate places. The text string may also contain the sub-string
"\n" or newline characters `\n' to control line
breaking explicitly. This dialog box is useful for asking questions that
require the user to answer either yes or no. The dialog box has a
Yes button and a No button, in which the user can switch
between by pressing the TAB key.
- --msgbox text
height width
- A message box is very similar to a yes/no box. The only
difference between a message box and a yes/no box is that a
message box has only a single OK button. You can use this
dialog box to display any message you like. After reading the message, the
user can press the ENTER key so that whiptail will exit and
the calling shell script can continue its operation.
- --infobox text
height width
- An info box is basically a message box. However, in this
case, whiptail will exit immediately after displaying the message
to the user. The screen is not cleared when whiptail exits, so that
the message will remain on the screen until the calling shell script
clears it later. This is useful when you want to inform the user that some
operations are carrying on that may require some time to finish.
- --inputbox
text height width [init]
- An input box is useful when you want to ask questions that require
the user to input a string as the answer. If init is supplied it is used
to initialize the input string. When inputing the string, the
BACKSPACE key can be used to correct typing errors. If the input
string is longer than the width of the dialog box, the input field will be
scrolled. On exit, the input string will be printed on stderr.
- --passwordbox
text height width [init]
- A password box is similar to an input box, except the text the user
enters is not displayed. This is useful when prompting for passwords or
other sensitive information. Be aware that if anything is passed in
"init", it will be visible in the system's process table to
casual snoopers. Also, it is very confusing to the user to provide them
with a default password they cannot see. For these reasons, using
"init" is highly discouraged.
- --textbox file
height width
- A text box lets you display the contents of a text file in a dialog
box. It is like a simple text file viewer. The user can move through the
file by using the UP/DOWN, PGUP/PGDN and HOME/END
keys available on most keyboards. If the lines are too long to be
displayed in the box, the LEFT/RIGHT keys can be used to scroll the
text region horizontally. For more convenience, forward and backward
searching functions are also provided.
- As its name suggests, a menu box is a dialog box that can be used
to present a list of choices in the form of a menu for the user to choose.
Each menu entry consists of a tag string and an item string.
The tag gives the entry a name to distinguish it from the other
entries in the menu. The item is a short description of the option
that the entry represents. The user can move between the menu entries by
pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first letter of the tag as a
hot-key. There are menu-height entries displayed in the menu at one
time, but the menu will be scrolled if there are more entries than that.
When whiptail exits, the tag of the chosen menu entry will
be printed on stderr.
- --checklist
text height width list-height [ tag item status ]
...
- A checklist box is similar to a menu box in that there are
multiple entries presented in the form of a menu. You can select and
deselect items using the SPACE key. The initial on/off state of each entry
is specified by status. On exit, a list of the tag strings
of those entries that are turned on will be printed on stderr.
- --radiolist
text height width list-height [ tag item status ]
...
- A radiolist box is similar to a menu box. The only
difference is that you can indicate which entry is currently selected, by
setting its status to on.
- --gauge text
height width percent
- A gauge box displays a meter along the bottom of the box. The meter
indicates a percentage. New percentages are read from standard input, one
integer per line. The meter is updated to reflect each new percentage. If
stdin is XXX, the first following line is a percentage and subsequent
lines up to another XXX are used for a new prompt. The gauge exits when
EOF is reached on stdin.
whiptail interprets arguments starting with a dash "-"
as being arguments. To avoid this, and start some text in, for example, a
menubox item, with a dash, whiptail honours the getopt convention of
accepting the special argument "--" which means that all following
arguments with dashes are to be treated verbatim and not parsed as
options.
If the specified height, width, or menu/list-height is zero,
whiptail will increase the values as needed in order to display all
information.
Exit status is 0 if whiptail is exited by pressing the
Yes or OK button, and 1 if the No or Cancel
button is pressed. Otherwise, if errors occur inside whiptail or
whiptail is exited by pressing the ESC key, the exit status is
255.
Based on the man page for dialog(1) by:
Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3
Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for version
0.4
Modifications for whiptail by:
Enrique Zanardi (ezanard@debian.org)
Alastair McKinstry (mckinstry@debian.org)