58.11 Batch Mode

The command line option ‘-batch’ causes SXEmacs to run noninteractively. In this mode, SXEmacs does not read commands from the terminal, it does not alter the terminal modes, and it does not expect to be outputting to an erasable screen. The idea is that you specify Lisp programs to run; when they are finished, SXEmacs should exit. The way to specify the programs to run is with ‘-l file’, which loads the library named file, and ‘-f function’, which calls function with no arguments.

Any Lisp program output that would normally go to the echo area, either using message or using prin1, etc., with t as the stream, goes instead to SXEmacs’s standard error descriptor when in batch mode. Thus, SXEmacs behaves much like a noninteractive application program. The echo area output that SXEmacs itself normally generates, such as command echoing, is suppressed entirely.

Function: noninteractive

This function returns non-nil when SXEmacs is running in batch mode.

Variable: noninteractive

This variable is non-nil when SXEmacs is running in batch mode. Setting this variable to nil, however, will not change whether SXEmacs is running in batch mode, and will not change the return value of the noninteractive function.