wish
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NAME
wish - Simple windowing shell
SYNOPSIS
wish ?fileName arg arg ...?
OPTIONS
-colormap new ||
Specifies that the window should have a |
new private colormap instead of using |
the default colormap for the screen.
-display display Display (and screen) on which to display
window.
-geometry geometry Initial geometry to use for window. If
this option is specified, its value is
stored in the geometry global variable
of the application's Tcl interpreter.
-name name Use name as the title to be displayed in
the window, and as the name of the
interpreter for send commands.
-sync Execute all X server commands
synchronously, so that errors are
reported immediately. This will result
in much slower execution, but it is
useful for debugging.
-visual visual ||
Specifies the visual to use for the |
window. Visual may have any of the |
forms supported by the Tk_GetVisual |
procedure. |
-- ||
Pass all remaining arguments through to |
the script's argv variable without |
interpreting them. This provides a |
mechanism for passing arguments such as |
-name to a script instead of having wish |
interpret them.
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DESCRIPTION
Wish is a simple program consisting of the Tcl command
language, the Tk toolkit, and a main program that reads
commands from standard input or from a file. It creates a
main window and then processes Tcl commands. If wish is |
invoked with no arguments, or with a first argument that |
starts with ``-'', then it reads Tcl commands interactively |
from standard input. It will continue processing commands |
until all windows have been deleted or until end-of-file is |
reached on standard input. If there exists a file .wishrc |
in the home directory of the user, wish evaluates the file |
as a Tcl script just before reading the first command from |
standard input. |
If wish is invoked with an initial fileName argument, then |
fileName is treated as the name of a script file. Wish will |
evaluate the script in fileName (which presumably creates a |
user interface), then it will respond to events until all |
windows have been deleted. Commands will not be read from |
standard input. There is no automatic evaluation of .wishrc |
in this case, but the script file can always source it if |
desired.
OPTIONS
Wish automatically processes all of the command-line options
described in the OPTIONS summary above. Any other command-
line arguments besides these are passed through to the
application using the argc and argv variables described
later.
APPLICATION NAME AND CLASS
The name of the application, which is used for purposes such |
as send commands, is taken from the -name option, if it is |
specified; otherwise it is taken from fileName, if it is |
specified, or from the command name by which wish was |
invoked. In the last two cases, if the name contains a |
``/'' character, then only the characters after the last |
slash are used as the application name. |
The class of the application, which is used for purposes |
such as specifying options with a RESOURCE_MANAGER property |
or .Xdefaults file, is the same as its name except that the |
first letter is capitalized.
VARIABLES
Wish sets the following Tcl variables:
argc Contains a count of the number of arg
arguments (0 if none), not including the
options described above.
argv Contains a Tcl list whose elements are the
arg arguments that follow a -- option or |
don't match any of the options described in |
OPTIONS above, in order, or an empty string
if there are no such arguments.
argv0 Contains fileName if it was specified.
Otherwise, contains the name by which wish
was invoked.
geometry If the -geometry option is specified, wish |
copies its value into this variable. If the |
variable still exists after fileName has been |
evaluated, wish uses the value of the |
variable in a wm geometry command to set the |
main window's geometry.
tcl_interactive
Contains 1 if wish is reading commands
interactively (fileName was not specified and
standard input is a terminal-like device), 0
otherwise.
SCRIPT FILES
If you create a Tcl script in a file whose first line is
#!/usr/local/bin/wish
then you can invoke the script file directly from your shell
if you mark it as executable. This assumes that wish has
been installed in the default location in /usr/local/bin;
if it's installed somewhere else then you'll have to modify
the above line to match. Many UNIX systems do not allow the
#! line to exceed about 30 characters in length, so be sure
that the wish executable can be accessed with a short file
name.
An even better approach is to start your script files with
the following three lines: |
#!/bin/sh |
# the next line restarts using wish \ |
exec wish "$0" "$@" |
This approach has three advantages over the approach in the |
previous paragraph. First, the location of the wish binary |
doesn't have to be hard-wired into the script: it can be |
anywhere in your shell search path. Second, it gets around |
the 30-character file name limit in the previous approach. |
Third, this approach will work even if wish is itself a |
shell script (this is done on some systems in order to |
handle multiple architectures or operating systems: the |
wish script selects one of several binaries to run). The |
three lines cause both sh and wish to process the script, |
but the exec is only executed by sh. sh processes the |
script first; it treats the second line as a comment and |
executes the third line. The exec statement cause the shell |
to stop processing and instead to start up wish to reprocess |
the entire script. When wish starts up, it treats all three |
lines as comments, since the backslash at the end of the |
second line causes the third line to be treated as part of |
the comment on the second line.
PROMPTS
When wish is invoked interactively it normally prompts for
each command with ``% ''. You can change the prompt by
setting the variables tcl_prompt1 and tcl_prompt2. If
variable tcl_prompt1 exists then it must consist of a Tcl
script to output a prompt; instead of outputting a prompt
wish will evaluate the script in tcl_prompt1. The variable
tcl_prompt2 is used in a similar way when a newline is typed
but the current command isn't yet complete; if tcl_prompt2
isn't set then no prompt is output for incomplete commands.
KEYWORDS
shell, toolkit