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linuxdialogredhatcentos5
Joseph Kreifels II
Joseph Kreifels II

Reputation: 573

Collect input with Linux Dialogs

I found out about Dialogs, so I'm updating menus today. So far, so good.

I came to one where I need to collect a user's input.

I have 

dialog --title " INPUT FILE NAME: " --inputbox "$(ls)" 30 40 2> answer

This will send the users input to a file named "answer"

I have tried

dialog --title " INPUT FILE NAME: " --inputbox "$(ls)" 30 40 2> $answer

but that doesnt seem to do anything.

I tried 

answer=$(dialog --title " INPUT FILE NAME: " --inputbox "$(ls)" 30 40 2)

but there is some kind of error.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 70

Answers (2)

Thomas Dickey
Thomas Dickey

Reputation: 54495

The manual page (for dialog) tells the story:

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.

The reason dialog uses the standard error by default for its output is that it uses the curses/ncurses library, which normally prints its output (for the screen updates) to the standard output. To change dialog's behavior (and write to the standard output), use the "--stdout" option.

Interestingly (though it may appear an obvious problem to solve because it complicates scripting), the Xdialog program implemented this option first; it seemed a Good Thing to add to dialog (see changelog).

Upvotes: 1

Joseph Kreifels II
Joseph Kreifels II

Reputation: 573

Done

dialog --title " INPUT FILE NAME: " --inputbox "$(ls )" 30 40 2>answer
ans=$(cat answer)
rm answer

Upvotes: 0

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