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
- 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.
- -use id
- Specifies that the main window for the application is to be
embedded in the window whose identifier is id, instead of
being created as an independent toplevel window. Id must be
specified in the same way as the value for the -use option
for toplevel widgets (i.e. it has a form like that returned by the
winfo id command).
- -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.
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 when the name of a script file is presented on the
wish command line, 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.
The end of a script file may be marked either by the physical
end of the medium, or by the character, '\032' ('\u001a',
control-Z). If this character is present in the file, the
wish application will read text up to but not including the
character. An application that requires this character in the file
may encode it as ``\032'', ``\x1a'', or ``\u001a''; or may generate
it by use of commands such as format or binary.
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