Check if the Enter key is pressed in a linux bash script

Question

I want to check if the value entered by the user using the read command is the Enter key using if/elif statements in order to echo something. How should I do?

i've tried to check "\n" if entered but it did'nt work

Jafar Albadarneh
– Jafar Albadarneh

2013-11-25 18:44:15 +00:00
Commented Nov 25, 2013 at 18:44 — Jafar Albadarneh
– Jafar Albadarneh, Commented Nov 25, 2013 at 18:44

Jim Garrison · Accepted Answer · 2013-11-25 19:48:34Z

4

The \n at the end of the user's input is stripped off before assigning the value to the shell variable. If the user just presses ENTER, the value read will be the empty string.

read VAR
if [[ -z $VAR ]]; then echo "User pressed ENTER with no input text"; fi

answered Nov 25, 2013 at 19:48

Jim Garrison

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1 Comment

tsds Over a year ago

Also it is worth unsetting $IFS variable. Without it the code above can run on spaces not just \n.

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