dialog
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 ques-
tions or display messages using dialog boxes from a shell script.
These types of dialog boxes are implemented (though not all are neces-
sarily compiled into dialog):
calendar, checklist, form, fselect, gauge, infobox, inputbox,
inputmenu, menu, msgbox (message), password, radiolist, tail-
box, tailboxbg, textbox, timebox, and yesno (yes/no).
You can put more than one dialog box into a script:
- Use the --and-widget token to force Dialog to proceed to the next
dialog unless you have pressed ESC to cancel, or
- Simply add the tokens for the next dialog box, making a chain.
Dialog stops chaining when the return code from a dialog is
nonzero, e.g., Cancel or No (see DIAGNOSTICS).
Some widgets, e.g., checklist, will write text to dialog’s output.
Normally that is the standard error, but there are options for chang-
ing this: --output-fd, --stderr and --stdout. No text is written if
the Cancel button (or ESC) is pressed; dialog exits immediately in
that case.
OPTIONS
All options begin with "--" (two ASCII hyphens, for the benefit of
those using systems with deranged locale support).
A "--" by itself is used as an escape, i.e., the next token on the
command-line is not treated as an option.
dialog --title -- --Not an option
The "--file" option tells dialog to read parameters from the file
named as its value.
dialog --file parameterfile
Blanks not within double-quotes are discarded (use backslashes to
quote single characters). The result is inserted into the command-
line, replacing --file and its option value. Interpretation of the
command-line resumes from that point.
Common Options
--aspect ratio
This gives you some control over the box dimensions when using
auto sizing (specifying 0 for height and width). It represents
width / height. The default is 9, which means 9 characters
wide to every 1 line high.
--backtitle backtitle
Specifies a backtitle string to be displayed on the backdrop,
at the top of the screen.
--beep Sound the audible alarm 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.
--cancel-label string
Override the label used for "Cancel" buttons.
--clear
The screen will be cleared on exit. This may be used alone,
without other options.
--colors
Interpret embedded "\Z" sequences in the dialog text by the
following character, which tells dialog to set colors or video
attributes: 0 through 7 are the ANSI used in curses: black,
red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white respectively.
Bold is set by ’b’, reset by ’B’. Reverse is set by ’r’, reset
by ’R’. Underline is set by ’u’, reset by ’U’. The settings
are cumulative, e.g., "\Zb\Z1" makes the following text bright
red. Restore normal settings with "\Zn".
--cr-wrap
Interpret embedded newlines in the dialog text as a newline on
the screen. Otherwise, dialog will only wrap lines where
needed to fit inside the text box. Even though you can control
line breaks with this, dialog will still wrap any lines that
are too long for the width of the box. Without cr-wrap, the
layout of your text may be formatted to look nice in the source
code of your script without affecting the way it will look in
the dialog.
See also the --no-collapse and --trim options.
--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.
--defaultno
Make the default value of the yes/no box a No. Likewise, make
the default button of widgets that provide "OK" and "Cancel" a
Cancel. If --nocancel was given that option overrides this,
making the default button always "Yes" (internally the same as
"OK").
--default-item string
Set the default item in a checklist, form or menu box. Nor-
mally the first item in the box is the default.
--exit-label string
Override the label used for "EXIT" buttons.
--extra-button
Show an extra button, between "OK" and "Cancel" buttons.
--extra-label string
Override the label used for "Extra" buttons. Note: for input-
menu widgets, this defaults to "Rename".
--help Prints the help message to dialog’s output. The help message
is printed if no options are given.
--help-button
Show a help-button after "OK" and "Cancel" buttons, i.e., in
checklist, radiolist and menu boxes. If --item-help is also
given, on exit the return status will be the same as for the
"OK" button, and the item-help text will be written to dialog’s
output after the token "HELP". Otherwise, the return status
will indicate that the Help button was pressed, and no message
printed.
--help-label string
Override the label used for "Help" buttons.
--help-status
If the help-button is selected, writes the checklist, radiolist
or form information after the item-help "HELP" information.
This can be used to reconstruct the state of a checklist after
processing the help request.
--ignore
Ignore options that dialog does not recognize. Some well-known
ones such as "--icon" are ignored anyway, but this is a better
choice for compatibility with other implementations.
--input-fd fd
Read keyboard input from the given file descriptor. Most dia-
log scripts read from the standard input, but the gauge widget
reads a pipe (which is always standard input). Some configura-
tions do not work properly when dialog tries to reopen the ter-
minal. Use this option (with appropriate juggling of file-
descriptors) if your script must work in that type of environ-
ment.
--insecure
Makes the password widget friendlier but less secure, by echo-
ing asterisks for each character.
--item-help
Interpret the tags data for checklist, radiolist and menu boxes
adding a column which is displayed in the bottom line of the
screen, for the currently selected item.
--keep-window
Do not remove/repaint the window on exit. This is useful for
keeping the window contents visible when several widgets are
run in the same process. Note that curses will clear the
screen when starting a new process.
--max-input size
Limit input strings to the given size. If not specified, the
limit is 2048.
--no-cancel
--nocancel
Suppress the "Cancel" button in checklist, inputbox and menu
box modes. A script can still test if the user pressed the ESC
key to cancel to quit.
--no-collapse
Normally dialog converts tabs to spaces and reduces multiple
spaces to a single space for text which is displayed in a mes-
sage boxes, etc. Use this option to disable that feature.
Note that dialog will still wrap text, subject to the --cr-wrap
and --trim options.
--no-kill
Tells dialog to put the tailboxbg box in the background, print-
ing its process id to dialog’s output. SIGHUP is disabled for
the background process.
--no-label string
Override the label used for "No" buttons.
--no-shadow
Suppress shadows that would be drawn to the right and bottom of
each dialog box.
--ok-label string
Override the label used for "OK" buttons.
--output-fd fd
Direct output to the given file descriptor. Most dialog
scripts write to the standard error, but error messages may
also be written there, depending on your script.
--print-maxsize
Print the maximum size of dialog boxes, i.e., the screen size,
to dialog’s output. This may be used alone, without other
options.
--print-size
Prints the size of each dialog box to dialog’s output.
--print-version
Prints dialog’s version to dialog’s output. This may be used
alone, without other options.
--separate-output
For checklist widgets, output result one line at a time, with
no quoting. This facilitates parsing by another program.
--separator string
--separate-widget string
Specify a string that will separate the output on dialog’s out-
put from each widget. This is used to simplify parsing the
result of a dialog with several widgets. If this option is not
given, the default separator string is a tab character.
--shadow
Draw a shadow to the right and bottom of each dialog box.
--single-quoted
Use single-quoting as needed (and no quotes if unneeded) for
the output of checklist’s as well as the item-help text. If
this option is not set, dialog uses double quotes around each
item. That requires occasional use of backslashes to make the
output useful in shell scripts.
--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 obsolete, since all new-window calls
are checked).
--sleep secs
Sleep (delay) for the given number of seconds after processing
a dialog box.
--stderr
Direct output to the standard error. This is the default,
since curses normally writes screen updates to the standard
output.
--stdout
Direct output to the standard output. This option is provided
for compatibility with Xdialog, however using it in portable
scripts is not recommended, since curses normally writes its
screen updates to the standard output. If you use this option,
dialog attempts to reopen the terminal so it can write to the
display. Depending on the platform and your environment, that
may fail.
--tab-correct
Convert each tab character to one or more spaces. Otherwise,
tabs are rendered according to the curses library’s interpreta-
tion.
--tab-len n
Specify the number of spaces that a tab character occupies if
the "--tab-correct" option is given. The default is 8.
--timeout secs
Timeout (exit with error code) if no user response within the
given number of seconds. This is overridden if the background
"--tailboxbg is used. A timeout of zero seconds is ignored.
--title title
Specifies a title string to be displayed at the top of the dia-
log box.
--trim eliminate leading blanks, trim literal newlines and repeated
blanks from message text.
See also the --cr-wrap and --no-collapse options.
--version
Same as "--print-version".
--visit-items
Modify the tab-traversal of checklist, radiobox, menubox and
inputmenu to include the list of items as one of the states.
This is useful as a visual aid, i.e., the cursor position helps
some users.
--yes-label string
Override the label used for "Yes" buttons.
Box Options
All dialog boxes have at least three parameters:
text the caption or contents of the box.
height
the height of the dialog box.
width
the width of the dialog box.
Other parameters depend on the box type.
--calendar text height width day month year
A calendar box displays month, day and year in separately
adjustable windows. If the values for day, month or year are
missing or negative, the current date’s corresponding values
are used. You can increment or decrement any of those using
the left-, up-, right- and down-arrows. Use vi-style h, j, k
and l for moving around the array of days in a month. Use tab
or backtab to move between windows. If the year is given as
zero, the current date is used as an initial value.
On exit, the date is printed in the form day/month/year.
--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 speci-
fied by status.
On exit, a list of the tag strings of those entries that are
turned on will be printed on dialog’s output. If the --sepa-
rate-output option is not given, the strings will be quoted to
make it simple for scripts to separate them. See the --single-
quoted option, which modifies the quoting behavior.
--form text height width formheight [ label y x item y x flen ilen ] ...
The form dialog displays a form consisting of labels and
fields, which are positioned on a scrollable window by coordi-
nates given in the script. The field length flen and input-
length ilen tell how long the field can be. The former defines
the length shown for a selected field, while the latter defines
the permissible length of the data entered in the field. If
flen is zero, the corresponding field cannot be altered. If
ilen is zero, it is set to flen.
Use up/down arrows (or control/N, control/P) to move between
fields. Use tab to move between windows.
On exit, the contents of the form-fields are written to dia-
log’s output, each field separated by a newline. Input-only
fields (flen is zero) are not written out.
--fselect filepath height width
The file-selection dialog displays a text-entry window in which
you can type a filename (or directory), and above that two win-
dows with directory names and filenames.
Here filepath can be a filepath in which case the file and
directory windows will display the contents of the path and the
text-entry window will contain the preselected filename.
Use tab or arrow keys to move between the windows. Within the
directory or filename windows, use the up/down arrow keys to
scroll the current selection. Use the space-bar to copy the
current selection into the text-entry window.
Typing any printable characters switches focus to the text-
entry window, entering that character as well as scrolling the
directory and filename windows to the closest match.
Use a carriage return or the "OK" button to accept the current
value in the text-entry window and exit.
On exit, the contents of the text-entry window are written to
dialog’s output.
--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 integer per line. The meter is updated to
reflect each new percentage. If the standard input reads the
string "XXX", then subsequent lines up to another "XXX" are
used for a new prompt. The gauge exits when EOF is reached on
the standard input.
The percent value denotes the initial percentage shown in the
meter. If not specified, it is zero.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. The widget
accepts no input, so the exit status is always OK.
--infobox text height width
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.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. Only an "OK"
button is provided for input, but an ESC exit status may be
returned.
--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
entering the string, the backspace, delete and cursor keys can
be used to correct typing errors. If the input string is
longer than can fit in the dialog box, the input field will be
scrolled.
On exit, the input string will be printed on dialog’s output.
--inputmenu text height width menu-height [ tag item ] ...
An inputmenu box is very similar to an ordinary menu box.
There are only a few differences between them:
1. The entries are not automatically centered but left
adjusted.
2. An extra button (called Rename) is implied to rename the
current item when it is pressed.
3. It is possible to rename the current entry by pressing the
Rename button. Then dialog will write the following on
dialog’s output.
RENAMED <tag> <item>
--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 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 cursor 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.
On exit the tag of the chosen menu entry will be printed on
dialog’s output. If the --help-button option is given, the
corresponding help text will be printed if the user selects the
help button.
--msgbox text height width
A message box is very similar to a yes/no box. The only dif-
ference between a message box and a yes/no box is that a mes-
sage box has only a single OK button. You can use this dialog
box to display any message you like. After reading the mes-
sage, the user can press the ENTER key so that dialog will exit
and the calling shell script can continue its operation.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. Only an "OK"
button is provided for input, but an ESC exit status may be
returned.
--passwordbox text height width [init]
A password box is similar to an input box, except that the text
the user enters is not displayed. This is useful when prompt-
ing for passwords or other sensitive information. Be aware
that if anything 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. See "--insecure" if you do not care about your
password.
On exit, the input string will be printed on dialog’s output.
--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.
On exit, the name of the selected item is written to dialog’s
output.
--tailbox file height width
Display text from a file in a dialog box, as in a "tail -f"
command. Scroll left/right using vi-style ’h’ and ’l’, or
arrow-keys. A ’0’ resets the scrolling.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. Only an "OK"
button is provided for input, but an ESC exit status may be
returned.
--tailboxbg file height width
Display text from a file in a dialog box as a background task,
as in a "tail -f &" command. Scroll left/right using vi-style
’h’ and ’l’, or arrow-keys. A ’0’ resets the scrolling.
Dialog treats the background task specially if there are other
widgets (--and-widget) on the screen concurrently. Until those
widgets are closed (e.g., an "OK"), dialog will perform all of
the tailboxbg widgets in the same process, polling for updates.
You may use a tab to traverse between the widgets on the
screen, and close them individually, e.g., by pressing ENTER.
Once the non-tailboxbg widgets are closed, dialog forks a copy
of itself into the background, and prints its process id if the
--no-kill option is given.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. Only an "EXIT"
button is provided for input, but an ESC exit status may be
returned.
NOTE: Older versions of dialog forked immediately and attempted
to update the screen individually. Besides being bad for per-
formance, it was unworkable. Some older scripts may not work
properly with the polled scheme.
--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 cursor, 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. You may also use
vi-style keys h, j, k, l in place of the cursor keys, and B or
N in place of the pageup/pagedown keys. Scroll up/down using
vi-style ’k’ and ’j’, or arrow-keys. Scroll left/right using
vi-style ’h’ and ’l’, or arrow-keys. A ’0’ resets the
left/right scrolling. For more convenience, vi-style forward
and backward searching functions are also provided.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. Only an "EXIT"
button is provided for input, but an ESC exit status may be
returned.
--timebox text height [width hour minute second]
A dialog is displayed which allows you to select hour, minute
and second. If the values for hour, minute or second are miss-
ing or negative, the current date’s corresponding values are
used. You can increment or decrement any of those using the
left-, up-, right- and down-arrows. Use tab or backtab to move
between windows.
On exit, the result is printed in the form hour:minute:second.
--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 fit in one line,
it will be automatically divided into multiple lines at appro-
priate places. The text string can 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.
On exit, no text is written to dialog’s output. In addition to
the "Yes" and "No" exit codes (see DIAGNOSTICS) an ESC exit
status may be returned.
The codes used for "Yes" and "No" match those used for "OK" and
"Cancel", internally no distinction is made.
RUN-TIME CONFIGURATION
1. Create a sample configuration file by typing:
"dialog --create-rc <file>"
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) is not found, use the file $HOME/.dialogrc
as the configuration file.
c) if the file in (b) is not found, try using the GLOBALRC file
determined at compile-time, i.e., /etc/dialogrc.
d) if the file in (c) is not 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
DIALOGOPTS Define this variable to apply any of the common options
to each widget. Most of the common options are reset
before processing each widget. If you set the options
in this environment variable, they are applied to dia-
log’s state after the reset. As in the --file option,
double-quotes and backslashes are interpreted.
The --file option is not considered a common option (so
you cannot embed it within this environment variable).
DIALOGRC Define this variable if you want to specify the name of
the configuration file to use.
DIALOG_CANCEL
DIALOG_ERROR
DIALOG_ESC
DIALOG_EXTRA
DIALOG_HELP
DIALOG_OK Define any of these variables to change the exit code
on Cancel (1), error (-1), ESC (255), Extra (3), Help
(2), or OK (0). Normally shell scripts cannot distin-
guish between -1 and 255.
DIALOG_TTY Set this variable to "1" to provide compatibility with
older versions of dialog which assumed that if the
script redirects the standard output, that the "--std-
out" option was given.
FILES
$HOME/.dialogrc default configuration file
EXAMPLES
The dialog sources contain several samples of how to use the different
box options and how they look. Just take a look into the directory
samples/ of the source.
DIAGNOSTICS
Exit status is subject to being overridden by environment variables.
Normally they are:
0 if dialog is exited by pressing the Yes or OK button.
1 if the No or Cancel button is pressed.
2 if the Help button is pressed.
3 if the Extra button is pressed.
-1 if errors occur inside dialog or dialog is exited by pressing the
ESC key.
BUGS
Perhaps.
AUTHOR
Savio Lam (lam836@cs.cuhk.hk) - version 0.3, "dialog"
Stuart Herbert (S.Herbert@sheffield.ac.uk) - patch for version 0.4
Pako (demarco_p@abramo.it) - version 0.9a, "cdialog",
Thomas Dickey (updates for 0.9b and beyond)
CONTRIBUTORS
Tobias C. Rittweiler (tobrit@freebits.de)
$Date: 2004/07/29 00:30:36 $ DIALOG(1)
