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, --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 spec-
              ified, 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 "
" 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, 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.

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 255.

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)