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wish(1tk)




wish(1)                  Tk Applications                  wish(1)

_________________________________________________________________


NAME

     wish - Simple windowing shell


SYNOPSIS

     wish ?-encoding name? ?fileName arg arg ...?


OPTIONS

     -encoding name      Specifies  the  encoding  of  the   text  |
                         stored in fileName.  This option is only  |
                         recognized prior to the  fileName  argu-  |
                         ment.

     -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  synchro-
                         nously,  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).
                         Note that on some  platforms  this  will
                         only work correctly if id refers to a Tk
                         frame or toplevel  that  has  its  -con-
                         tainer option enabled.

     -visual visual      Specifies the visual to use for the win-
                         dow.   Visual  may have any of the forms

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wish(1)                  Tk Applications                  wish(1)

                         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 com-
     mands from standard input or from a file.  It creates a main
     window  and then processes Tcl commands.  If wish is invoked
     with arguments, then the  first  few  arguments,  ?-encoding
     name?  ?fileName?  specify  the  name of a script file, and,
     optionally, the encoding of the text  data  stored  in  that
     script  file.   A  value  for  fileName is recognized if the
     appropriate argument does not start with "-".

     If there are no arguments, or the arguments do not specify a
     fileName,  then  wish  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 arguments to wish do specify a fileName, 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.

     Note that on Windows,  the  wishversion.exe  program  varies
     from the tclshversion.exe program in an additional important
     way: it does not connect to a standard Windows  console  and
     is instead a windowed program. Because of this, it addition-
     ally provides access to its own console command.


OPTION PROCESSING

     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.

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wish(1)                  Tk Applications                  wish(1)


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  argu-
                    ments  (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 do
                    not 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.   Oth-
                    erwise,  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 vari-
                    able 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  is  installed  somewhere  else then you will have to
     modify the above line to match.  Many UNIX  systems  do  not

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wish(1)                  Tk Applications                  wish(1)

     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" ${1+"$@"}
     This approach has three advantages over the approach in  the
     previous  paragraph.  First, the location of the wish binary
     does not 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  han-
     dle  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 pro-
     cessing 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  physi-
     cal   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 for-
     mat or binary.


PROMPTS

     When wish is invoked interactively it normally  prompts  for
     each  command  with "% ".  You can change the prompt by set-
     ting 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 is not yet complete; if tcl_prompt2
     is not set then no prompt is output for incomplete commands.


KEYWORDS

     shell, toolkit

Tk                      Last change: 8.0                        4


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