十 Tools To Add Some Spice To Your UNIX Shell Scripts

Creating GUI application is not just expensive task but task that
takes time and patience. Luckily, both UNIX and Linux ships with plenty
of tools to write beautiful GUI scripts. The following tools are tested
on FreeBSD and Linux operating systems but should work under other UNIX
like operating systems.

#1: notify-send Command

The notify-send command allows you to send desktop notifications to
the user via a notification daemon from the command line. This is useful
to inform the desktop user about an event or display some form of
information without getting in the user’s way. You need to install the
following package:
$ sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin

In this example, send simple desktop notification from the command line, enter:

?
notify-send "rsnapshot done :)"

?

Sample outputs:

Fig:01: notify-send in action

Here is another code with additional options:

?
....
alert=
18000

live=
$(
lynx
 --dump http://money.rediff.com/ | grep
 'BSE LIVE'
 | awk
 '{ print $5}'
 | sed
 's/,//g;s/\.
[0-9]*//g'
)

[
 $notify_counter
 -eq 0
 ]
 && [
 $live
 -ge $alert
 ]
 && {
 notify-send -t 5000
 -u low -i   "BSE Sensex touched 18k"
;  notify_counter=
1
; }

...

Sample outputs: