[sf-perl] determining console or xwindows mode

[Joe Brenner]

Richard Reina <gatorreina at gmail.com> wrote:

> Quinn Weaver <quinn at fairpath.com>
>
> >  Richard Reina <gatorreina at gmail.com> wrote:

> >> I have a program that must run differently in xwindows then it
> >> would on a linux console.  I was wondering if there's a function to
> >> determine if a program is running in a linux console or in xwindows

> > If you're running under X, the DISPLAY environment variable should be set.
> > So do:
> >
> > if ($ENV{DISPLAY}) {
> >    ...
>
> Perfect. Thank you. It looks like both suggestions will work.

Also, you might want to look at the Perl Cookbook, 2nd edition,
recipe 15.2 "Testing Whether a Progam Is Running Interactively"

They suggest:

use POSIX qw( getpgrp tcgetpgrp );
sub i_am_interactive {
  my $tty;
  open( $tty, '<', "/dev/tty") or die "$!";
  my $tpgrp = tcgetpgrp( fileno( $tty ) );
  my $pgrp = getpgrp();
  close $tty;
  return ($tpgrp == $pgrp);
}

Or, in the increasingly unlikely event that you're not
on a POSIX system:

sub i_am_interactive {
  return -t STDIN && -t STDOUT;
}