NAME
wish - Simple windowing shell

SYNOPSIS
wish ?fileName arg arg ...?

OPTIONS

-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.

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 (not including the options described above), in order, or an empty string if there are no arg 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.

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