wish(1) Tk (8.0) wish(1)
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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.
-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
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wish(1) Tk (8.0) wish(1)
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
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wish(1) Tk (8.0) wish(1)
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.
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wish(1) Tk (8.0) wish(1)
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
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