User Commands 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. These types of dialog boxes are implemented
(though not all are necessarily compiled into dialog):
calendar, checklist, dselect, editbox, form, fselect,
gauge, infobox, inputbox, inputmenu, menu, mixedform,
mixedgauge, msgbox (message), passwordbox,
passwordform, pause, progressbox, radiolist, tailbox,
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 can-
cel, 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 DIAGNOS-
TICS).
Some widgets, e.g., checklist, will write text to dialog's
output. Normally that is the standard error, but there are
options for changing 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 ASCI hyphens, for the
benefit of those using systems with deranged locale sup-
port).
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 "--args" option tells dialog to list the command-line
parameters to the standard error. This is useful when de-
bugging complex scripts using the "--" and "--file", since
the command-line may be rewritten as these are expanded.
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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 in-
serted into the command-line, replacing "--file" and its op-
tion value. Interpretation of the command-line resumes from
that point. If parameterfile begins with "&", dialog inter-
prets the following text as a file descriptor number rather
than a filename.
Common Options
--ascii-lines
Rather than draw graphics lines around boxes, draw
ASCI "]" and "-" in the same place. See also "--no-
lines".
--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.
--begin y x
Specify the position of the upper left corner of a dia-
log box on the screen.
--cancel-label string
Override the label used for "Cancel" buttons.
--clear
Clears the widget screen, keeping only the screencolor
background. Use this when you combine widgets with "-
-and-widget" to erase the contents of a previous widget
on the screen, so it won't be seen under the contents
of a following widget. Understand this as the comple-
ment of "--keep-window". To compare the effects, use
these:
All three widgets visible, staircase effect, ordered
1,2,3:
dialog --begin 2 2 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --begin 4 4 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --begin 6 6 --yesno "" 0 0
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Only the last widget is left visible:
dialog --clear --begin 2 2 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --clear --begin 4 4 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --begin 6 6 --yesno "" 0 0
All three widgets visible, staircase effect, ordered
3,2,1:
dialog --keep-window --begin 2 2 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --keep-window --begin 4 4 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --begin 6 6 --yesno "" 0 0
First and third widget visible, staircase effect, or-
dered 3,1:
dialog --keep-window --begin 2 2 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --clear --begin 4 4 --yesno "" 0 0 \
--and-widget --begin 6 6 --yesno "" 0 0
Note, if you want to restore original console colors
and send your cursor home after the dialog program has
exited, use the clear (1) command.
--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 set-
tings are cumulative, e.g., "\Zb\Z1" makes the follow-
ing text bold (perhaps bright) red. Restore normal
settings with "\Zn".
--column-separator string
Tell dialog to split data for radio/checkboxes and
menus on the occurrences of the given string, and to
align the split data into columns.
--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, dia-
log 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
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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. Like-
wise, make the default button of widgets that provide
"OK" and "Cancel" a Cancel. If "--nocancel" or "--
visit-items" are given those options 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.
Normally 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" but-
tons.
--extra-label string
Override the label used for "Extra" buttons. Note: for
inputmenu 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 indi-
cate 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 re-
quest.
--ignore
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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 oth-
er implementations.
--input-fd fd
Read keyboard input from the given file descriptor.
Most dialog scripts read from the standard input, but
the gauge widget reads a pipe (which is always standard
input). Some configurations do not work properly when
dialog tries to reopen the terminal. Use this option
(with appropriate juggling of file-descriptors) if your
script must work in that type of environment.
--insecure
Makes the password widget friendlier but less secure,
by echoing 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-tite
Normally dialog checks to see if it is running in an
xterm, and in that case tries to suppress the initiali-
zation strings that would make it switch to the alter-
nate screen. Switching between the normal and alter-
nate screens is visually distracting in a script which
runs dialog several times. Use this option to allow
dialog to use those initialization strings.
--keep-window
Normally when dialog performs several tailboxbg widgets
connected by "--and-widget", it clears the old widget
from the screen by painting over it. Use this option
to suppress that repainting.
At exit, dialog repaints all of the widgets which have
been marked with "--keep-window", even if they are not
tailboxbg widgets. That causes them to be repainted in
reverse order. See the discussion of the "--clear" op-
tion for examples.
--max-input size
Limit input strings to the given size. If not speci-
fied, the limit is 2048.
--no-cancel
--nocancel
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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 message 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 back-
ground, printing 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-lines
Rather than draw lines around boxes, draw spaces in the
same place. See also "--ascii-lines".
--no-ok
--nook
Suppress the "OK" button in checklist, inputbox and
menu box modes. A script can still test if the user
pressed the "Enter" key to accept the data.
--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 dia-
log scripts write to the standard error, but error mes-
sages may also be written there, depending on your
script.
--separator string
--output-separatorstring
Specify a string that will separate the output on
dialog's output from checklists, rather than a newline
(for --separate-output) or a space. This applies to
other widgets such as forms and editboxes which normal-
ly use a newline.
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--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.
--separate-widget string
Specify a string that will separate the output on
dialog's output from each widget. This is used to sim-
plify parsing the result of a dialog with several widg-
ets. If this option is not given, the default separa-
tor 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 unneed-
ed) for the output of checklist's as well as the item-
help text. If this option is not set, dialog uses dou-
ble 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 de-
fault, since curses normally writes screen updates to
the standard output.
--stdout
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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 out-
put. 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 (for
the textbox widget; otherwise to a single space). Oth-
erwise, tabs are rendered according to the curses
library's interpretation.
--tab-len n
Specify the number of spaces that a tab character occu-
pies if the "--tab-correct" option is given. The de-
fault is 8. This option is only effective for the
textbox widget.
--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 dialog box.
--trace filename
logs keystrokes to the given file. Use control/T to
log a picture of the current dialog window.
--trim
eliminate leading blanks, trim literal newlines and re-
peated 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, menu-
box 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.
When this option is given, the cursor is initially
placed on the list. Abbreviations (the first letter of
the tag) apply to the list items. If you tab to the
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button row, abbreviations apply to the buttons.
--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 incre-
ment 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. In-
stead of choosing one entry among the entries, each en-
try 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 dialog's output.
If the "--separate-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.
--dselect filepath height width
The directory-selection dialog displays a text-entry
window in which you can type a directory, and above
that a windows with directory names.
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Here filepath can be a filepath in which case the
directory window will display the contents of the path
and the text-entry window will contain the preselected
directory.
Use tab or arrow keys to move between the windows.
Within the directory window, 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 window 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.
--editbox filepath height width
The edit-box dialog displays a copy of the file. You
may edit it using the backspace, delete and cursor keys
to correct typing errors. It also recognizes
pageup/pagedown. Unlike the --inputbox, you must tab
to the "OK" or "Cancel" buttons to close the dialog.
Pressing the "Enter" key within the box will split the
corresponding line.
On exit, the contents of the edit window are written to
dialog's output.
--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 coordinates 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. and the contents of the field determine
the displayed-length.
- If flen is negative, the corresponding field cannot
be altered, and the negated value of flen is used as
the displayed-length.
- If ilen is zero, it is set to flen.
Use up/down arrows (or control/N, control/P) to move
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between fields. Use tab to move between windows.
On exit, the contents of the form-fields are written to
dialog's output, each field separated by a newline.
The text used to fill non-editable fields (flen is zero
or negative) is not written out.
--fselect filepath height width
The fselect (file-selection) dialog displays a text-
entry window in which you can type a filename (or
directory), and above that two windows 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.
Typing the space character forces dialog to complete
the current name (up to the point where there may be a
match against more than one entry).
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 percen-
tages are read from standard input, one integer per
line. The meter is updated to reflect each new percen-
tage. If the standard input reads the string "X",
then the first line following is taken as an integer
percentage, then subsequent lines up to another "X"
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.
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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 display-
ing 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 -
--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
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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 print-
ed 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.
--mixedform text height width formheight [ label y x item y x flen ilen itype ] ...
The mixedform dialog displays a form consisting of la-
bels and fields, much like the --form dialog. It
differs by adding a field-type parameter to each
field's description. Each bit in the type denotes an
attribute of the field:
1 hidden, e.g., a password field.
2 readonly, e.g., a label.
--mixedgauge text height width percent [ tag1 item1 ] ...
A mixedgauge box displays a meter along the bottom of
the box. The meter indicates the percentage.
It also displays a list of the tag- and item-values at
the top of the box. See dialog(3) for the tag values.
The text is shown as a caption between the list and me-
ter. The percent value denotes the initial percentage
shown in the meter.
No provision is made for reading data from the standard
input as --gauge does.
On exit, no text is written to dialog's output. The
widget accepts no input, so the exit status is always
OK.
--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 dialog will exit and the calling
shell script can continue its operation.
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If the message is too large for the space, dialog may
allow you to scroll it, provided that the underlying
curses implementation is capable enough. In this case,
a percentage is shown in the base of the widget.
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.
--pause text height width seconds
A pause box displays a meter along the bottom of the
box. The meter indicates how many seconds remain until
the end of the pause. The pause exits when timeout is
reached or the user presses the OK button (status OK)
or the user presses the CANCEL button or Esc key.
--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 prompting 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.
--passwordform text height width formheight [ label y x item y x flen ilen ] ...
This is identical to --form except that all text fields
are treated as password widgets rather than inputbox
widgets.
--progressbox text height width
--progressbox height width
A progressbox is similar to an tailbox, except that it
will exit when it reaches the end of the file. If
three parameters are given, it displays the text under
the title, delineated from the scrolling file's con-
tents. If only two parameters are given, this text is
omitted.
--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.
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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 back-
ground 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 con-
currently. 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 performance, 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,
page-up, page-down 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 page-up and page-down 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.
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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 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 tab or backtab to move between win-
dows.
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 au-
tomatically divided into multiple lines at appropriate
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 press-
ing the TAB key.
On exit, no text is written to dialog's output. In ad-
dition to the "Yes" and "No" exit codes (see DIAGNOS-
TICS) 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.
Obsolete Options
--beep
This was used to tell the original cdialog that it
should make a beep when the separate processes of the
tailboxbg widget would repaint the screen.
--beep-after
Beep after a user has completed a widget by pressing
one of the buttons.
RUN-TIME CONFIGURATION
1. Create a sample configuration file by typing:
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"dialog --create-rc "
2. At start, dialog determines the settings to use as fol-
lows:
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 GLO-
BALRC file determined at compile-time, i.e.,
/etc/dialogrc.
d) if the file in (c) is not found, use compiled in de-
faults.
3. Edit the sample configuration file and copy it to some
place that dialog can find, as stated in step 2 above.
KEY BINDINGS
You can override or add to key bindings in dialog by adding
to the configuration file. Dialog's bindkey command maps
single keys to its internal coding.
bindkey widget curseskey dialogkey
The widget name can be "*" (all widgets), or specific widg-
ets such as textbox. Specific widget bindings override the
"*" bindings. User-defined bindings override the built-in
bindings.
The curseskey can be any of the names derived from
curses.h, e.g., "HELP" from "KEYHELP". Dialog also recog-
nizes ANSI control characters such as "^A", "^?", as well as
C1-controls such as "~A" and "~?". Finally, it allows any
single character to be escaped with a backslash.
Dialog's internal keycode names correspond to the
DLGKEYSENUM type in dlgkeys.h, e.g., "HELP" from
"DLGKHELP".
ENVIRONMENT
DIALOGOPTS Define this variable to apply any of the com-
mon options to each widget. Most of the com-
mon options are reset before processing each
widget. If you set the options in this en-
vironment variable, they are applied to
dialog's state after the reset. As in the
"--file" option, double-quotes and
backslashes are interpreted.
The "--file" option is not considered a com-
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User Commands DIALOG(1)
mon 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.
DIALOGCANCEL
DIALOGEROR
DIALOGESC
DIALOGEXTRA
DIALOGHELP
DIALOGITEMHELP
DIALOGOK Define any of these variables to change the
exit code on Cancel (1), error (-1), ESC
(255), Extra (3), Help (2), Help with --
item-help (2), or OK (0). Normally shell
scripts cannot distinguish between -1 and
255.
DIALOGTY Set this variable to "1" to provide compati-
bility with older versions of dialog which
assumed that if the script redirects the
standard output, that the "--stdout" 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
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User Commands DIALOG(1)
pressing the ESC key.
COMPATIBILITY
You may want to write scripts which run with other dialog
"clones".
ORIGINAL DIALOG
First, there is the "original" dialog program to consider
(versions 0.3 to 0.9). It had some misspelled (or incon-
sistent) options. The dialog program maps those deprecated
options to the preferred ones. They include:
Option Treatment
--beep-after ignored
--guage mapped to --gauge
XDIALOG
Technically, "Xdialog", this is an X application. With some
care, it is possible to write useful scripts that work with
both Xdialog and dialog.
The dialog program ignores these options which are recog-
nized by Xdialog:
Option Treatment
--allow-close ignored
--auto-placement ignored
--fixed-font ignored
--icon ignored
--keep-colors ignored
--no-close ignored
--no-cr-wrap ignored
--screen-center ignored
--separator mapped to --separate-output
--smooth ignored
--under-mouse ignored
--wmclass ignored
Xdialog's manpage has a section discussing its compatibility
with dialog.
WHIPTAIL
Then there is whiptail. For practical purposes, it is main-
tained by Debian. Its documentation claims
whiptail(1) is a lightweight replacement for dialog(1),
to provide dialog boxes for shell scripts. It is built on the
newt windowing library rather than the ncurses library, allowing
it to be smaller in embedded enviroments such as installers,
rescue disks, etc.
whiptail is designed to be drop-in compatible with dialog, but
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User Commands DIALOG(1)
has less features: some dialog boxes are not implemented, such
as tailbox, timebox, calendarbox, etc.
Comparing actual sizes (Debian testing, 2007/1/10): The to-
tal of sizes for whiptail, the newt, popt and slang li-
braries is 757kb. The comparable number for dialog (count-
ing ncurses) is 520kb. Disregard the first paragraph.
The second paragraph is misleading, since whiptail also does
not work for common options of dialog, such as the gauge
box. whiptail is less compatible with dialog than the
decade-old original dialog 0.4 program.
whiptail's manpage borrows features from dialog, e.g., --
default-item, --output-fd, but oddly cites only dialog ver-
sions up to 0.4 as a source. That is, its manpage refers to
features which were borrowed from more recent versions of
dialog, e.g., the --gauge and --password boxes, as well as
options such as -separate-output. Somewhat humorously, one
may note that the popt feature (undocumented in its manpage)
of using a "--" as an escape was documented in dialog's man-
page about a year before it was mentioned in whiptail's man-
page. whiptail's manpage incorrectly attributes that to
getopt (and is inaccurate anyway).
Debian uses whiptail for the official dialog variation.
The dialog program ignores or maps these options which are
recognized by whiptail:
Option Treatment
--fb ignored
--fullbutton ignored
--nocancel mapped to --no-cancel
--noitem ignored
BUGS
Perhaps.
AUTHOR
Thomas E. Dickey (updates for 0.9b and beyond)
CONTRIBUTORS
Kiran Cherupally - the mixed form and mixed gauge widgets.
Tobias C. Rittweiler
Valery Reznic - the form and progressbox widgets.
Yura Kalinichenko adapted the gauge widget as "pause".
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User Commands DIALOG(1)
This is a rewrite (except as needed to provide compatibili-
ty) of the earlier version of dialog 0.9a, which lists as
authors:
Savio Lam - version 0.3, "dialog"
Stuart Herbert - patch for version 0.4
Marc Ewing - the gauge widget.
Pasquale De Marco "Pako" - version 0.9a, "cdialog"
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