Section 1: dialog
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DIALOG(1) DIALOG(1)
NAME
dialog - display dialog boxes from shell scripts
SYNOPSIS
dialog --clear
dialog --create-rc file
dialog --print-maxsize
dialog common-options box-options
DESCRIPTION
Dialog is a program that will let you to present a variety
of questions or display messages using dialog boxes from a
shell script. Currently, these types of dialog boxes are
implemented:
checklist, gauge, infobox, inputbox, menu, msgbox (mes-
sage), password, radiolist, tailbox, tailboxbg, textbox,
and yesno (yes/no).
OPTIONS
Common Options
--aspect ratio
Specify a nominal line width based on the length of
the prompt string to use as a guide to forcibly
wrapping lines that are too long relative to the
dialog box. The default is 9.
--backtitle backtitle
Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the
backdrop, at the top of the screen.
--beep Beep each time the screen is refreshed.
--beep-after
Beep if input is interrupted, e.g., by a control/C.
--begin y x
Specify the position of the upper left corner of a
dialog box on the screen.
--clear
The screen will be cleared to the screen attribute
on exit. This may be used as the only option.
--cr-wrap
Interpret embedded newlines in the dialog text as a
newline on the screen. Otherwise, the text for
each dialog will display on a single line.
--create-rc file
When dialog supports run-time configuration, this
can be used to dump a sample configuration file to
the file specified by file.
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--help Prints the help message to standard error. The
help message also will be printed if no options are
given.
--defaultno
Make the default value of the yes/no box a No.
--no-kill
Tells dialog to put the tailboxbg box in the back-
ground, printing its process id to standard error.
SIGHUP is disabled for the background process.
--no-shadow
Suppress shadows which would be drawn to the right
and bottom of each dialog box.
--print-maxsize
Print the maximum size of dialog boxes, i.e., the
screen size, to the standard error. This must be
used as the only option.
--print-size
Prints the size of each dialog box to standard
error.
--print-version
Prints dialog's version to standard error. This
may be the only option.
--separate-output
For checklist widgets, output result one line at a
time, with no quoting. This facilitates parsing by
another program.
--separate-widget
Specify a string that will separate the output on
standard error from each widget. This is used to
simplify parsing the result of a dialog with sev-
eral widgets.
--shadow
Draw a shadow to the right and bottom of each dia-
log box.
--size-err
Check the resulting size of a dialog box before
trying to use it, printing the resulting size if it
is larger than the screen. (This option is obso-
lete, since all new-window calls are checked).
--sleep secs
Sleep (delay) for the given number of seconds after
processing a dialog box.
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--tab-correct
Convert each tab character to one or more spaces.
Otherwise, tabs are rendered according to the
curses library's interpretation.
--tab-len n
Specify the number of spaces that a tab character
occupies if the --tab-correct option is given. The
default is 8.
--title title
Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top
of the dialog box.
Box Options
--checklist text height width list-height [ tag item
status ] ...
A checklist box is similar to a menu box; there are
multiple entries presented in the form of a menu.
Instead of choosing one entry among the entries,
each entry can be turned on or off by the user.
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.
--gauge text height width percent
A gauge box displays a meter along the bottom of
the box. The meter indicates the percentage. New
percentages are read from standard input, one inte-
ger 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.
--infobox
An info box is basically a message box. However,
in this case, dialog will exit immediately after
displaying the message to the user. The screen is
not cleared when dialog 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 ques-
tions that require the user to input a string as
the answer. If init is supplied it is used to ini-
tialize the input string. When inputing the
string, the BACKSPACE key can be used to correct
typing errors. If the input string is longer than
can be fitted in the dialog box, the input field
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will be scrolled. On exit, the input string will be
printed on stderr.
--msgbox
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 but-
ton. 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 dialog will
exit and the calling shell script can continue its
operation.
--passwordbox
A password box is similar to an input box, except
that the text the user enters is not displayed.
This is useful when prompting for passwords or
other sensitive information. Be aware that if any-
thing 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.
--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.
--tailbox
Display text from a file in a dialog box, as in a
"tail -f" command.
--textboxbg
Display text from a file in a dialog box in a back-
ground process, as in a "tail -f &" command.
--textbox
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 horizon-
tally. 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. Choices
are displayed in the order given. Each menu entry
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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 repre-
sents. The user can move between the menu entries
by pressing the UP/DOWN keys, the first letter of
the tag as a hot-key, or the number keys 1-9. 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 dialog exits, the
tag of the chosen menu entry will be printed on
stderr.
--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 fitted 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.
RUN-TIME CONFIGURATION
1. Create a sample configuration file by typing:
"dialog --create-rc "
2. At start, dialog determines the settings to use as
follows:
a) if environment variable DIALOGRC is set, its value
determines the name of the configuration file.
b) if the file in (a) can't be found, use the file
$HOME/.dialogrc as the configuration file.
c) if the file in (b) can't be found, use compiled in
defaults.
3. Edit the sample configuration file and copy it to some
place that dialog can find, as stated in step 2 above.
ENVIRONMENT
DIALOGRC Define this variable if you want to specify
the name of the configuration file to use.
FILES
$HOME/.dialogrc default configuration file
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DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is
0 if dialog is exited by pressing the Yes or OK button.
1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed.
-1 if errors occur inside dialog or dialog is exited by
pressing the ESC key.
BUGS
Text files containing tab characters may cause problems
with text box. Tab characters in text files must first be
expanded to spaces before being displayed by text box.
Screen update is too slow.
AUTHOR
Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3
Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for
version 0.4
Thomas Dickey (updates for 0.9b)
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