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up vote 6 down vote favorite
2

Of course you can do this sort of thing, 

read var; if [[ $var = 'y' ]]; then echo "Yes"; fi

But is there any way to skip the first step and do something a little more like this, (ideally without needing a subshell):

if [[ $(read var) = 'y' ]]; then echo "Yes"; fi

Of course the above doesn't work unless you add echo, but I'm looking for something much cleaner and simpler than this:

if [[ $(read var; echo "$var") = 'y' ]]; then echo "Yes"; fi

It would be ideal if this would work:

if [[ read = 'y' ]]; then echo "Yes"; fi
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2  
read && printf '\a' is pretty succinct and is bound to make your application a popular one. –  mikeserv 2 days ago

3 Answers 3

up vote 3 down vote accepted

How about using a function to do what you need:

user_input () {
    read var
    echo $var
}
if [ "$(user_input)" = 'y' ]; then echo "Yes"; fi

At the top I define a function called user_input, which will read the value in, and then echo it out. Then the if statement is able to take that value and check if it is 'y'. I've wrapped the $(user_input) in quotation marks in case the user put in spaces, so that the script doesn't just error out.

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Yes: if I change the name of the function to something like user_input then the resulting code reads quite nicely. –  iconoclast yesterday
up vote 2 down vote

Not sure if this is still too long for what you had in mind:

read foo && [ "$foo" = 'y' ] && echo 'Yes'
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up vote 1 down vote

With zsh:

read -q && echo yes

(see also -s to suppress the echo of the y or n you type).

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