1WHIPTAIL(1) General Commands Manual WHIPTAIL(1)
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6 whiptail - display dialog boxes from shell scripts
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9 whiptail [ --title title ] [ --backtitle backtitle ] [ --clear ] [
10 --default-item string ] [ --defaultno ] [ --fb ] [ --nocancel ] [
11 --yes-button text ] [ --no-button text ] [ --ok-button text ] [ --can‐
12 cel-button text ] [ --noitem [ ] --output-fd fd ] [ --separate-output ]
13 [ --scrolltext ] [ --topleft ] box-options
14
16 whiptail is a program that will let you present a variety of questions
17 or display messages using dialog boxes from a shell script. Currently,
18 these types of dialog boxes are implemented:
19 yes/no box, menu box, input box, message box, text box, info box,
21 checklist box, radiolist box gauge box, and password box.
22
24 --clear
25 The screen will be cleared to the screen attribute on exit.
26 This doesn't work in an xterm (and descendants) if alternate
27 screen switching is enabled, because in that case slang writes
28 to (and clears) an alternate screen.
29 --defaultno
31 The dialog box will open with the cursor over the No button.
32 --default-item string
34 Set the default item in a menu box. Normally the first item in
35 the box is the default.
36 --fb Use full buttons. (By default, whiptail uses compact buttons).
38 --nocancel
40 The dialog box won't have a Cancel button.
41 --yes-button text
43 Set the text of the Yes button.
44 --no-button text
46 Set the text of the No button.
47 --ok-button text
49 Set the text of the Ok button.
50 --cancel-button text
52 Set the text of the Cancel button.
53 --noitem
55 The menu, checklist and radiolist widgets will display tags
56 only, not the item strings. The menu widget still needs some
57 items specified, but checklist and radiolist expect only tag and
58 status.
59 --separate-output
61 For checklist widgets, output result one line at a time, with no
62 quoting. This facilitates parsing by another program.
63 --output-fd fd
65 Direct output to the given file descriptor. Most whiptail
66 scripts write to standard error, but error messages may also
67 be written there, depending on your script.
68 --title title
70 Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top of the dia‐
71 log box.
72 --backtitle backtitle
74 Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the backdrop, at
75 the top of the screen.
76 --scrolltext
78 Force the display of a vertical scrollbar.
79 --topleft
81 Put window in top-left corner.
82 Box Options
84 --yesno text height width
86 A yes/no dialog box of size height rows by width columns will be
87 displayed. The string specified by text is displayed inside the
88 dialog box. If this string is too long to be fit in one line, it
89 will be automatically divided into multiple lines at appropriate
90 places. The text string may also contain the sub-string "\n" or
91 newline characters `\n' to control line breaking explicitly.
92 This dialog box is useful for asking questions that require the
93 user to answer either yes or no. The dialog box has a Yes but‐
94 ton and a No button, in which the user can switch between by
95 pressing the TAB key.
96 --msgbox text height width
98 A message box is very similar to a yes/no box. The only differ‐
99 ence between a message box and a yes/no box is that a message
100 box has only a single OK button. You can use this dialog box to
101 display any message you like. After reading the message, the
102 user can press the ENTER key so that whiptail will exit and the
103 calling shell script can continue its operation.
104 --infobox text height width
106 An info box is basically a message box. However, in this case,
107 whiptail will exit immediately after displaying the message to
108 the user. The screen is not cleared when whiptail exits, so that
109 the message will remain on the screen until the calling shell
110 script clears it later. This is useful when you want to inform
111 the user that some operations are carrying on that may require
112 some time to finish.
113 --inputbox text height width [init]
115 An input box is useful when you want to ask questions that
116 require the user to input a string as the answer. If init is
117 supplied it is used to initialize the input string. When input‐
118 ing the string, the BACKSPACE key can be used to correct typing
119 errors. If the input string is longer than the width of the dia‐
120 log box, the input field will be scrolled. On exit, the input
121 string will be printed on stderr.
122 --passwordbox text height width [init]
124 A password box is similar to an input box, except the text the
125 user enters is not displayed. This is useful when prompting for
126 passwords or other sensitive information. Be aware that if any‐
127 thing is passed in "init", it will be visible in the system's
128 process table to casual snoopers. Also, it is very confusing to
129 the user to provide them with a default password they cannot
130 see. For these reasons, using "init" is highly discouraged.
131 --textbox file height width
133 A text box lets you display the contents of a text file in a
134 dialog box. It is like a simple text file viewer. The user can
135 move through the file by using the UP/DOWN, PGUP/PGDN and
136 HOME/END keys available on most keyboards. If the lines are too
137 long to be displayed in the box, the LEFT/RIGHT keys can be used
138 to scroll the text region horizontally. For more convenience,
139 forward and backward searching functions are also provided.
140 --menu text height width menu-height [ tag item ] ...
142 As its name suggests, a menu box is a dialog box that can be
143 used to present a list of choices in the form of a menu for the
144 user to choose. Each menu entry consists of a tag string and an
145 item string. The tag gives the entry a name to distinguish it
146 from the other entries in the menu. The item is a short descrip‐
147 tion of the option that the entry represents. The user can move
148 between the menu entries by pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first
149 letter of the tag as a hot-key. There are menu-height entries
150 displayed in the menu at one time, but the menu will be scrolled
151 if there are more entries than that. When whiptail exits, the
152 tag of the chosen menu entry will be printed on stderr.
153 --checklist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ...
155 A checklist box is similar to a menu box in that there are mul‐
156 tiple entries presented in the form of a menu. You can select
157 and deselect items using the SPACE key. The initial on/off
158 state of each entry is specified by status. On exit, a list of
159 the tag strings of those entries that are turned on will be
160 printed on stderr.
161 --radiolist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ...
164 A radiolist box is similar to a menu box. The only difference
165 is that you can indicate which entry is currently selected, by
166 setting its status to on.
167 --gauge text height width percent
170 A gauge box displays a meter along the bottom of the box. The
171 meter indicates a percentage. New percentages are read from
172 standard input, one integer per line. The meter is updated to
173 reflect each new percentage. If stdin is XXX, the first follow‐
174 ing line is a percentage and subsequent lines up to another XXX
175 are used for a new prompt. The gauge exits when EOF is reached
176 on stdin.
177
180 whiptail interprets arguments starting with a dash "-" as being argu‐
181 ments. To avoid this, and start some text in, for example, a menubox
182 item, with a dash, whiptail honours the getopt convention of accepting
183 the special argument "--" which means that all following arguments with
184 dashes are to be treated verbatim and not parsed as options.
185
187 Exit status is 0 if whiptail is exited by pressing the Yes or OK but‐
188 ton, and 1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed. Otherwise, if errors
189 occur inside whiptail or whiptail is exited by pressing the ESC key,
190 the exit status is -1.
191
193 Based on the man page for dialog(1) by:
194 Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3
196 Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for version 0.4
198 Modifications for whiptail by:
200 Enrique Zanardi (ezanard@debian.org)
202 Alastair McKinstry (mckinstry@debian.org)
204Whiptail Version 0.52.5 31 January 2007 WHIPTAIL(1)