WHIPTAIL(1)						      General Commands Manual						       WHIPTAIL(1)

NAME

       whiptail - display dialog boxes from shell scripts

SYNOPSIS

       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

DESCRIPTION

       whiptail  is  a	program  that will let you present a variety of questions or display messages using dialog boxes from a shell script. Cur-
       rently, 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.

OPTIONS

       --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   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 spec-
	      ified, but checklist and radiolist expect only tag and status.

       --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.

       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 "
" or newline characters `
' 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 pass-
	      words or other sensitive information. Be aware that if anything is passed in "init", it will be visible in the system's process  ta-
	      ble  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  set-
	      ting 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, then  subsequent  lines  up	to
	      another XXX are used for a new prompt.  The gauge exits when EOF is reached on stdin.

NOTES

       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.

DIAGNOSTICS

       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 -1.

AUTHOR

       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)

Whiptail Version 0.52.5 					  31 January 2007						       WHIPTAIL(1)