1

Trying to use the "read command" to accept user input from the command prompt itself but my script doesnt seem to be moving forward

echo "Do you want to continue?(yes/no)"
read -p $1
if [ "$1" == "yes" ]
then
sleep 5s
echo ""
echo " move ahead"
else
    echo ""
    echo "Skipping The Step.."
    echo ""
sleep 5s
fi

I want to execute the script like this..

sh script.sh yes
sh script.sh no

Added a -p to the above script and all seems to work very well. This is my real problem. I have another script test.sh which calls script.sh. So this is how i put the input 

cat  test.sh yes
#!/bin/bash
echo "execute the below script"
sh script.sh $1



sh test.sh yes

This way doesnt work as the script picks up a default no and moves ahead. Any ideas.

Improve this question
5
  • I added a -p command in front of the script and it seems to work. This is my real problem. I have another script called test.sh which in turn calls this script ie script.sh. So in test.sh i added this line. cat test.sh yes sh script.sh $1 This was it doesnt seem to work Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:09
  • No, the -p argument doesn't even allow the user to change the answer. Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:10
  • Do you want it as a command line argument or as user input? Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:10
  • @JuliePelletier - looking at a command line input but only problem is one script has to call the other script like i showed it above. Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:16
  • bash is not sh. bash is the GNU implementation of a sh interpreter, but there are many other different implementations. read -p is not valid standard sh syntax. Those different sh implementations will treat it differently. Check here for the sh language specification, and specifically for the read utility. Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 7:24

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

$1,$2 … - command line positional arguments and couldn't be assigned like read [-p] $1 or any other way except 

set -- firsr_arg second_arg …

For your case it can be test if arguments is present then test them

while [ -z "$REPLY" ] ; do
    if [ -z "$1" ] ; then
         read -p "Do you want to continue?(yes/no) "
    else
         REPLY=$1
         set --
    fi
    case $REPLY in
        [Yy]es) sleep 5s
                echo -e "\n move ahead" ;;
         [Nn]o) echo -e "\nSkipping The Step..\n"
                sleep 5s ;;
             *) echo "Wrong answer. Print 'yes' or 'no'" 
                unset REPLY ;;
    esac
done
Improve this answer
6
  • what set -- does ? Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:42
  • That is the obvious answer but so far I doubt it will clarify the confusion in OP's mind. Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:42
  • 1
    @Rahul help set: Set or unset values of shell options and positional parameters. Change the value of shell attributes and positional parameters, or display the names and values of shell variables. Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:54
  • @Costas cool, you have already earned my upvote ;) Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 6:59
  • That very much depends on the sh implementation. read 1 or 1=foo work in zsh. 1=foo also works in rc and derivatives. Note that read -p is not sh syntax. In some sh implementations, it's to read from the co-processes. Only the bash implementation of sh recognises it as the way to specify a prompt. In any case, none of read -p var, read 1 or read without variable is valid POSIX sh syntax. You want printf 'Prompt: '; read REPLY in a sh script. Commented Jul 20, 2016 at 7:21

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