Question

When you double-click a bash script, Ubuntu asks if the user wants to Display, Run, or Run In Terminal…

Is there a way within the script to determine if the user chose “Run In Terminal”?

Answer 1

Strictly speaking, you can’t tell whether the user chose “Run In Terminal” after clicking on the script, or fired up a terminal and ran the script from there. But the commands below should help you, especially [ -t 2 ].

if [ -t 1 ]; then
  echo "Standard output is a terminal."
  echo "This means a terminal is available, and the user did not redirect the script's output."
fi

if [ -t 2 ]; then
  echo "Standard error is a terminal." >&2
  echo "If you're going to display things for the user's attention, standard error is normally the way to go." >&2
fi

if tty >/dev/null; then
  echo "Standard input is a terminal." >$(tty)
  echo "The tty command returns the name of the terminal device." >$(tty)
fi

echo "This message is going to the terminal if there is one." >/dev/tty
echo "/dev/tty is a sort of alias for the active terminal." >/dev/tty
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  : # Well, there wasn't one.
fi

if [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then
  xmessage "A GUI is available."
fi