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.
-
--menu text height width menu-height [ tag
item ] ...
- 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 (
[email protected]) - version 0.3
Stuart Herbert (
[email protected]) - patch for version 0.4
Modifications for whiptail by:
Enrique Zanardi (
[email protected])
Alastair McKinstry (
[email protected])