reading user input in shell script

Question

While being in loop, I am reading user input as below:

#!/bin/bash
while read line; do
    echo $line
    python find_entity.py $line
    read -p "Enter your name : " choice
    echo $choice
done < "q0.txt"

but still it does not ask for user input choice, rather writes True and just continue. What is wrong here?

Change the shebang to #!/bin/bash -x and look at the output... — Fredrik Pihl
– Fredrik Pihl, Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 11:26
The purpose of the -x flag is to turn on debugging so that you'll see what your parameters expands to. Look at the output and verify that $line etc contains the expected values. — Fredrik Pihl
– Fredrik Pihl, Commented Nov 20, 2014 at 11:42

gboffi · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-20 12:22:11Z

2

The following will not cover all the possible use cases, but please try if this simple solution suffices for yours

...
read -p "Enter your name : " choice < /dev/tty
...

what happens, what was pointed to you... is that read reads from standard input, and you have globally redirected stdin to the file q0.txt

edited Nov 20, 2014 at 12:22

answered Nov 20, 2014 at 11:47

gboffi

25.4k10 gold badges62 silver badges98 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

manolonte · Accepted Answer · 2014-11-20 15:18:33Z

1

Why don't you simply do:

for line in `cat q0.txt`
do
    echo $line
    python find_entity.py $line
    read -p "Enter your name : " choice
    echo $choice
done

Your code does not ask for any input because you are redirecting the content of q0.txt to the standard input, and the "read" statement gets the choice variable from the same place.

answered Nov 20, 2014 at 15:18

manolonte

1694 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

reading user input in shell script

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related