1WHIPTAIL(1)                 General Commands Manual                WHIPTAIL(1)
2
3
4

NAME

6       whiptail - display dialog boxes from shell scripts
7

SYNOPSIS

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

DESCRIPTION

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
20       yes/no  box,  menu  box,  input  box,  message box, text box, info box,
21       checklist box, radiolist box gauge box, and password box.
22

OPTIONS

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
30       --defaultno
31              The dialog box will open with the cursor over the No button.
32
33       --default-item string
34              Set  the default item in a menu box.  Normally the first item in
35              the box is the default.
36
37       --fb, --fullbuttons
38              Use full buttons. (By default, whiptail uses compact buttons).
39
40       --nocancel
41              The dialog box won't have a Cancel button.
42
43       --yes-button text
44              Set the text of the Yes button.
45
46       --no-button text
47              Set the text of the No button.
48
49       --ok-button text
50              Set the text of the Ok button.
51
52       --cancel-button text
53              Set the text of the Cancel button.
54
55       --noitem
56              The menu, checklist and  radiolist  widgets  will  display  tags
57              only,  not  the  item  strings. The menu widget still needs some
58              items specified, but checklist and radiolist expect only tag and
59              status.
60
61       --notags
62              Don't display tags in the menu, checklist and radiolist widgets.
63
64       --separate-output
65              For checklist widgets, output result one line at a time, with no
66              quoting.  This facilitates parsing by another program.
67
68       --output-fd fd
69              Direct output to  the  given  file  descriptor.   Most  whiptail
70              scripts write to standard error, but  error  messages  may  also
71              be written there, depending on your script.
72
73       --title title
74              Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top of the  dia‐
75              log box.
76
77       --backtitle backtitle
78              Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the backdrop, at
79              the top of the screen.
80
81       --scrolltext
82              Force the display of a vertical scrollbar.
83
84       --topleft
85              Put window in top-left corner.
86
87       -h, --help
88              Print a help message and exit.
89
90       -v, --version
91              Print version information and exit.
92
93       Box Options
94
95       --yesno text height width
96              A yes/no dialog box of size height rows by width columns will be
97              displayed.  The string specified by text is displayed inside the
98              dialog box. If this string is too long to be fit in one line, it
99              will be automatically divided into multiple lines at appropriate
100              places. The text string may also contain the sub-string "\n"  or
101              newline  characters  `\n'  to  control line breaking explicitly.
102              This dialog box is useful for asking questions that require  the
103              user  to answer either yes or no.  The dialog box has a Yes but‐
104              ton and a No button, in which the user  can  switch  between  by
105              pressing the TAB key.
106
107       --msgbox text height width
108              A message box is very similar to a yes/no box.  The only differ‐
109              ence between a message box and a yes/no box is  that  a  message
110              box  has only a single OK button. You can use this dialog box to
111              display any message you like.  After reading  the  message,  the
112              user  can press the ENTER key so that whiptail will exit and the
113              calling shell script can continue its operation.
114
115       --infobox text height width
116              An info box is basically a message box.  However, in this  case,
117              whiptail  will  exit immediately after displaying the message to
118              the user. The screen is not cleared when whiptail exits, so that
119              the  message  will  remain on the screen until the calling shell
120              script clears it later. This is useful when you want  to  inform
121              the  user  that some operations are carrying on that may require
122              some time to finish.
123
124       --inputbox text height width [init]
125              An input box is useful when you want to ask questions  that  re‐
126              quire  the user to input a string as the answer. If init is sup‐
127              plied it is used to initialize the input string.  When  inputing
128              the  string, the BACKSPACE key can be used to correct typing er‐
129              rors. If the input string is longer than the width of the dialog
130              box, the input field will be scrolled. On exit, the input string
131              will be printed on stderr.
132
133       --passwordbox text height width [init]
134              A password box is similar to an input box, except the  text  the
135              user  enters is not displayed. This is useful when prompting for
136              passwords or other sensitive information. Be aware that if  any‐
137              thing  is  passed  in "init", it will be visible in the system's
138              process table to casual snoopers. Also, it is very confusing  to
139              the  user  to  provide  them with a default password they cannot
140              see. For these reasons, using "init" is highly discouraged.
141
142       --textbox file height width
143              A text box lets you display the contents of a text file in a di‐
144              alog  box.  It  is  like a simple text file viewer. The user can
145              move through the  file  by  using  the  UP/DOWN,  PGUP/PGDN  and
146              HOME/END keys available on most keyboards.  If the lines are too
147              long to be displayed in the box, the LEFT/RIGHT keys can be used
148              to  scroll  the  text region horizontally. For more convenience,
149              forward and backward searching functions are also provided.
150
151       --menu text height width menu-height [ tag item ] ...
152              As its name suggests, a menu box is a dialog  box  that  can  be
153              used  to present a list of choices in the form of a menu for the
154              user to choose. Each menu entry consists of a tag string and  an
155              item  string.  The  tag gives the entry a name to distinguish it
156              from the other entries in the menu. The item is a short descrip‐
157              tion  of the option that the entry represents. The user can move
158              between the menu entries by pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first
159              letter  of  the  tag as a hot-key. There are menu-height entries
160              displayed in the menu at one time, but the menu will be scrolled
161              if  there  are  more entries than that. When whiptail exits, the
162              tag of the chosen menu entry will be printed on stderr.
163
164       --checklist text height width list-height [ tag item status ] ...
165              A checklist box is similar to a menu box in that there are  mul‐
166              tiple  entries  presented in the form of a menu.  You can select
167              and deselect items using the  SPACE  key.   The  initial  on/off
168              state  of each entry is specified by status.  On exit, a list of
169              the tag strings of those entries that  are  turned  on  will  be
170              printed on stderr.
171
172
173       --radiolist text height width list-height  [ tag item status ] ...
174              A  radiolist  box is similar to a menu box.  The only difference
175              is that you can indicate which entry is currently  selected,  by
176              setting its status to on.
177
178
179       --gauge text height width percent
180              A  gauge  box displays a meter along the bottom of the box.  The
181              meter indicates a percentage.  New  percentages  are  read  from
182              standard  input,  one integer per line.  The meter is updated to
183              reflect each new percentage.  If stdin is XXX, the first follow‐
184              ing  line is a percentage and subsequent lines up to another XXX
185              are used for a new prompt.  The gauge exits when EOF is  reached
186              on stdin.
187
188

NOTES

190       whiptail  interprets  arguments starting with a dash "-" as being argu‐
191       ments.  To avoid this, and start some text in, for example,  a  menubox
192       item,  with a dash, whiptail honours the getopt convention of accepting
193       the special argument "--" which means that all following arguments with
194       dashes are to be treated verbatim and not parsed as options.
195
196       If  the  specified height, width, or menu/list-height is zero, whiptail
197       will increase the values as needed in order to display all information.
198
199

DIAGNOSTICS

201       Exit status is 0 if whiptail is exited by pressing the Yes or  OK  but‐
202       ton,  and 1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed. Otherwise, if errors
203       occur inside whiptail or whiptail is exited by pressing  the  ESC  key,
204       the exit status is -1.
205

AUTHOR

207       Based on the man page for dialog(1) by:
208
209       Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3
210
211       Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for version 0.4
212
213       Modifications for whiptail by:
214
215       Enrique Zanardi (ezanard@debian.org)
216
217       Alastair McKinstry (mckinstry@debian.org)
218
219
220
221Whiptail Version 0.52.5         31 January 2007                    WHIPTAIL(1)
Impressum