How do I prompt for input in a Linux shell script?

Question

I want to pause input in a shell script, and prompt the user for choices. The standard 'Yes, No, or Cancel' type question. How do I accomplish this in a typical bash prompt?

Myrddin Emrys · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-10 21:31:32Z

up vote 857 down vote accepted

The simplest and most widely available method to get user input at a shell prompt is the 'read' command. The best way to illustrate its use is a simple demonstration:

while true; do
    read -p "Do you wish to install this program?" yn
    case $yn in
        [Yy]* ) make install; break;;
        [Nn]* ) exit;;
        * ) echo "Please answer yes or no.";;
    esac
done

Another method, pointed out by Steven Huwig, is bash's 'select' command. Here is the same example using select:

echo "Do you wish to install this program?"
select yn in "Yes" "No"; do
    case $yn in
        Yes ) make install; break;;
        No ) exit;;
    esac
done

With select you don't need to sanitize the input... it prompts you with your choices, and you type a number corresponding to the choice you want. Select also loops automatically... there's no need for a 'while true' loop to retry if they give invalid input.

Also, please check out the excellent answer by F. Hauri below.

edited Jan 10 '15 at 21:31

answered Oct 22 '08 at 17:08

Myrddin Emrys

14.1k102641

9

read -p "Do you wish to install this program? " yn ... – Steve Baker Oct 22 '08 at 17:21

14

Using Bash in OS X Leopard, I changed exit to break to keep from closing the tab when I selected 'no'. – Trey Piepmeier Dec 2 '09 at 18:34

3

@Trey, you might want to use return instead of exit in that case. – glenn jackman May 13 '11 at 13:06

How does this work with options longer than Yes or No? In the case clause, do you write something like: Install program and do nothing afterwards ) make install; break; – Shawn Feb 29 '12 at 6:12

3

I just want to thank whoever tried to fix my syntax error, even though your edit was rejected. I'm sorry they rejected it; you were correct. Thank you for the fix. – Myrddin Emrys Jul 10 '14 at 5:24

| show 9 more comments

Pistos · Answer 2 · 2014-11-28 20:01:34Z

up vote 256 down vote

echo "Please enter some input: "
read input_variable
echo "You entered: $input_variable"

edited Nov 28 '14 at 20:01

answered Oct 22 '08 at 17:08

Pistos

13.1k84364

This should be accepted answer – Nam G VU Aug 19 at 5:04

add a comment |

F. Hauri · Answer 3 · 2016-01-18 15:22:56Z

At least five answer for one generic question.

Edit 2015-10-29: Adding readline's history capacity

Depending on

posix compliant: could work on poor system with generic shell environments
bash specific: using so called bashisms

and if you want

simple ``in line'' question / answer (generic solutions)
pretty formated interfaces, like ncurses or more graphical using libgtk or libqt...
use powerful readline history capability (new oct 2015)

1. Posix generic solutions

With poor language features, you could use read command, followed by if ... then ... else:

echo -n "Is this a good question (y/n)? "
read answer
if echo "$answer" | grep -iq "^y" ;then
    echo Yes
else
    echo No
fi

Posix, but single key feature

But if you want user not to have to hit Return, you could write:

(Edited: As @JonathanLeffler rightly suggest, saving stty's configuration could be better than simply force them to sane.)

echo -n "Is this a good question (y/n)? "
old_stty_cfg=$(stty -g)
stty raw -echo ; answer=$(head -c 1) ; stty $old_stty_cfg # Care playing with stty
if echo "$answer" | grep -iq "^y" ;then
    echo Yes
else
    echo No
fi

Note: This was tested under sh, bash, ksh, dash and busybox!

Same, but waiting explicitly for y or n:

#/bin/sh
echo -n "Is this a good question (y/n)? "
old_stty_cfg=$(stty -g)
stty raw -echo
answer=$( while ! head -c 1 | grep -i '[ny]' ;do true ;done )
stty $old_stty_cfg
if echo "$answer" | grep -iq "^y" ;then
    echo Yes
else
    echo No
fi

Using dedicated tools

There is a bunch of tools which were built, using 'libncurses, libgtk, libqt' or any graphical library, for this kind of goal:

if whiptail --yesno "Is this a good question" 20 60 ;then
    echo Yes
else
    echo No
fi

Depending on which distribution you're using, you could replace whiptail by:

 dialog --yesno "Is this a good question" 20 60 && echo Yes

gdialog --yesno "Is this a good question" 20 60 && echo Yes

kdialog --yesno "Is this a good question" 20 60 && echo Yes

Where 20 is height of dialog box in number of lines and 60 is width of dialog box. Of course this values does not matter for graphical interfaces like gdialog and kdialog, but all these tools have to use the same syntax.

DIALOG=whiptail
if [ -x /usr/bin/dialog ] ;then DIALOG=gdialog ; fi
if [ -x /usr/bin/xdialog ] ;then DIALOG=xdialog ; fi
...
$DIALOG --yesno ...

2. Bash specific solutions

Basic in line method

read -p "Is this a good question (y/n)? " answer
case ${answer:0:1} in
    y|Y )
        echo Yes
    ;;
    * )
        echo No
    ;;
esac

I prefer to use case so I could even test for yes | ja | si | oui if needed...

in line with single key feature

For this, under bash, we just have to specify the length of attended input for read command is 1:

read -n 1 -p "Is this a good question (y/n)? " answer

Under bash, read command accept a timeout parameter, which could be useful.

read -t 3 -n 1 -p "Is this a good question (y/n)? " answer
[ -z "$answer" ] && answer="Yes"  # if 'yes' have to be default choice

Using dedicated tools

Of course, all graphical tools work same under bash:

if whiptail --yesno "Is this a good question" 20 60 ;then
    echo Yes
else
    echo No
fi

3. Some tricks about dedicated tools

If dialog seem easy to use for simple yes - no purpose, using them for more sophisticated dialog box may be hard to use:

whiptail --menu "Is this a good question" 20 60 12 y Yes n No m Maybe

Storing answer into a variable is something tricky: The standard output is for interface drawing and the answer is printed on the error output:

answer=$($DIALOG --menu "Is this a good question" \
    20 60 12 y Yes n No m Maybe 2>&1 >/dev/tty)

or under bash:

read answer < <($DIALOG 2>&1 >/dev/tty --menu \
   "Is this a good question" 20 60 12 y Yes n No m Maybe)

or

read answer < <($DIALOG 2>&1 >/dev/tty --passwordbox "Enter pass" 20 60)
echo "Your pass is: $answer"

Progress bar:

$DIALOG --gauge "Filling the tank" 20 60 0 < <(
    for i in {1..100};do
        printf "XXX\n%d\n%(%a %b %T)T progress: %d\nXXX\n" $i -1 $i
        sleep .033
    done
)

Little demo:

#!/bin/sh
while true ;do
    [ -x "$(which ${DIALOG%% *})" ] || DIALOG=dialog
    DIALOG=$($DIALOG --menu "Which tool for next run?" 20 60 12 2>&1 \
            whiptail        "dialog boxes from shell scripts" >/dev/tty \
            dialog        "dialog boxes from shell with ncurses" \
            gdialog        "dialog boxes from shell with Gtk" \
            kdialog        "dialog boxes from shell with Kde" ) || exit
    clear;echo "Choosed: $DIALOG."
    for i in `seq 1 100`;do
        date +"`printf "XXX\n%d\n%%a %%b %%T progress: %d\nXXX\n" $i $i`"
        sleep .0125
      done | $DIALOG --gauge "Filling the tank" 20 60 0
    $DIALOG --infobox "This is a simple info box\n\nNo action required" 20 60
    sleep 3
    if $DIALOG --yesno  "Do you like this demo?" 20 60 ;then
        AnsYesNo=Yes; else AnsYesNo=No; fi
    AnsInput=$($DIALOG --inputbox "A text:" 20 60 "Text here..." 2>&1 >/dev/tty)
    AnsPass=$($DIALOG --passwordbox "A secret:" 20 60 "First..." 2>&1 >/dev/tty)
    $DIALOG --textbox /etc/motd 20 60
    AnsCkLst=$($DIALOG --checklist "Check some..." 20 60 12 \
        Correct "This demo is useful"        off \
        Fun        "This demo is nice"        off \
        Strong        "This demo is complex"        on 2>&1 >/dev/tty)
    AnsRadio=$($DIALOG --radiolist "I will:" 20 60 12 \
        " -1" "Downgrade this answer"        off \
        "  0" "Not do anything"                on \
        " +1" "Upgrade this anser"        off 2>&1 >/dev/tty)
    out="Your answers:\nLike: $AnsYesNo\nInput: $AnsInput\nSecret: $AnsPass"
    $DIALOG --msgbox "$out\nAttribs: $AnsCkLst\nNote: $AnsRadio" 20 60
  done

5. Using readline's history

More than words, look (or try) this sample:

#!/bin/bash

set -i
HISTFILE=~/.myscript.history
history -c
history -r

myread() {
    read -e -p '> ' $1
    history -s ${!1}
}
trap 'history -a;exit' 0 1 2 3 6

while myread line;do
    case ${line%% *} in
        exit )  break ;;
        *    )  echo "Doing something with '$line'" ;;
      esac
  done

This will create a file .myscript.history in your $HOME directory, than you could use readline's history commands, like Up, Down, Ctrl+r and others.

Note that stty provides the -g option for use: old_stty=$(stty -g); stty raw -echo; …; stty "$old_stty". This restores the setting exactly as they were found, which may or may not be the same as stty -sane. — Jonathan Leffler, Feb 7 '15 at 5:09
Yes, there is not 4., but I thinks there is more than one thing in 3.! ;-) — F. Hauri, Oct 29 '15 at 8:03

philipyassin · Answer 4 · 2015-06-14 22:19:14Z

up vote 103 down vote

You can use the built-in read command. Use the -p option to prompt the user with a question.

Since BASH4, you can now use -i to suggest an answer, so the user only have to press return to enter it :

read -e -p "Enter the path to the file: " -i "/usr/local/etc/" FILEPATH
echo $FILEPATH

(But remember to use the "readline" option -e to allow line editing with arrow keys)

edited Jun 14 '15 at 22:19

answered May 13 '11 at 4:44

philipyassin

3,34612142

2

It should be noted that FILEPATH is the variable name you have chosen, and is set with the answer to the command prompt. So if you were to then run vlc "$FILEPATH", for example, vlc would open that file. – Ken Sharp Feb 23 '15 at 1:45

add a comment |

Steven Huwig · Answer 5 · 2008-10-22 18:14:01Z

up vote 78 down vote

Bash has select for this purpose.

select result in Yes No Cancel
do
    echo $result
done

answered Oct 22 '08 at 18:14

Steven Huwig

10.3k63968

10

+1 Geniously simple solution. Only thing: This will prompt and promt and prompt... until you add an exit inside :) – kaiser Feb 28 '13 at 0:24

3

(kaiser: To break from it, just enter the EOT: Ctrl-D. But of course, real code using it will need a break or an exit in the body.) – Zorawar Apr 22 '14 at 22:50

4

This will not allow you to enter y or n, though.You choose by entering 1 2 or 3. – djjeck Sep 10 '14 at 16:03

add a comment |

serg · Answer 6 · 2011-02-03 13:23:04Z

up vote 38 down vote

read -p "Are you alright? (y/n) " RESP
if [ "$RESP" = "y" ]; then
  echo "Glad to hear it"
else
  echo "You need more bash programming"
fi

answered Feb 3 '11 at 13:23

serg

38132

add a comment |

mpen · Answer 7 · 2012-08-30 17:59:18Z

up vote 26 down vote

Here's something I put together:

#!/bin/sh

promptyn () {
    while true; do
        read -p "$1 " yn
        case $yn in
            [Yy]* ) return 0;;
            [Nn]* ) return 1;;
            * ) echo "Please answer yes or no.";;
        esac
    done
}

if promptyn "is the sky blue?"; then
    echo "yes"
else
    echo "no"
fi

I'm a beginner, so take this with a grain of salt, but it seems to work.

answered Aug 30 '12 at 17:59

mpen

85k123490747

6

If you change case $yn in to case ${yn:-$2} in then you can use the second argument as the default value, Y or N. – jchook Jul 24 '13 at 20:21

1

This is the best solution thanks. – poxtron Jan 7 '15 at 19:28

add a comment |

Dennis · Answer 8 · 2013-11-15 07:04:18Z

up vote 13 down vote

This solution reads a single character and calls a function on a yes response.

read -p "Are you sure? (y/n) " -n 1
echo
if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then
    do_something      
fi

answered Nov 15 '13 at 7:04

Dennis

16.5k137083

why the 'echo' ? – Jav Apr 1 '14 at 13:27

1

@Jav the echo prints a newline after your response. Without it, the next thing to be printed would appear immediately after your response on the same line. Try removing the echo to see for yourself. – Dennis Apr 1 '14 at 16:10

add a comment |

Myrddin Emrys · Answer 9 · 2015-12-23 22:11:12Z

up vote 12 down vote

inquire ()  {
  echo  -n "$1 [y/n]? "
  read answer
  finish="-1"
  while [ "$finish" = '-1' ]
  do
    finish="1"
    if [ "$answer" = '' ];
    then
      answer=""
    else
      case $answer in
        y | Y | yes | YES ) answer="y";;
        n | N | no | NO ) answer="n";;
        *) finish="-1";
           echo -n 'Invalid response -- please reenter:';
           read answer;;
       esac
    fi
  done
}

... other stuff

inquire "Install now?"

...

Where'd my formatting go? I guess that shows what happens if you cut and paste from unix text.

edited Dec 23 '15 at 22:11

Myrddin Emrys

14.1k102641

answered Oct 22 '08 at 17:08

SumoRunner

46625

Put four spaces in the beginning of each line to preserve the formatting of code. – Jouni K. Seppänen Oct 22 '08 at 17:15

7

Why we providing 'y' and 'n' as parameters to inquire() if the case switches are hardcoded? That's just asking for misuse. They are fixed parameters, not changable, so the echo on line 2 should read: echo -n "$1 [Y/N]? " They can't be changed, so they shouldn't be supplied. – Myrddin Emrys Oct 22 '08 at 20:06

@MyrddinEmrys Could you please elaborate your comment? Or post a link to an article or a couple of keywords so I could do research on my own. – Mateusz Piotrowski Mar 26 at 20:46

2

@MateuszPiotrowski The answer has been edited and improved since I made my comment. You can click the 'edited Dec 23' link above to view all the past versions of this answer. Back in 2008, the code was quite different. – Myrddin Emrys Mar 27 at 5:21

add a comment |

Jahid · Answer 10 · 2015-04-19 00:37:02Z

up vote 11 down vote

read -e -p "Enter your choice: " choice

The -e option enables the user to edit the input using arrow keys.

If you want to use a suggestion as input:

read -e -i "yes" -p "Enter your choice: " choice

-i option prints a suggestive input.

answered Apr 19 '15 at 0:37

Jahid

8,41942347

1

(note: options are specific to bash (don't work in zsh) – AdrieanKhisbe May 10 '15 at 17:41

yap, -e -i don't work in sh (Bourne shell), but the question is tagged bash specifically.. – Jahid May 10 '15 at 20:22

I know, :) I was just adding this information. – AdrieanKhisbe May 11 '15 at 11:27

add a comment |

Myrddin Emrys · Answer 11 · 2016-03-04 19:34:34Z

up vote 11 down vote

The easiest way to achieve this with the least number of lines is as follows:

    read -p "<Your Friendly Message here> : y/n/cancel" CONDITION;
    if [ "$CONDITION" == "y" ]; then
       #doSomething
    fi

The "if" is just an example, it is up to you how to handle this variable.

edited Mar 4 at 19:34

Myrddin Emrys

14.1k102641

answered Mar 3 at 21:22

Apurv Nerlekar

1,61511220

add a comment |

Community · Answer 12 · 2016-02-10 13:52:32Z

up vote 10 down vote

Use the read command:

echo Would you like to install? "(Y or N)"

read x

# now check if $x is "y"
if [ "$x" = "y"]

and then all of the other stuff you need

edited Feb 10 at 13:52

Community♦

1

answered May 9 '12 at 0:00

ThatLinuxGuy

10912

7

you are comparing two constants. change "x" to "$x" – Bruce Barnett May 17 '13 at 19:32

Your answer is soo true! – yckart Jan 19 at 15:40

You need a space between "y" and the closing square bracket. bash needs the space to parse, otherwise it doesn't see the closing bracket. – Gordon Freeman Mar 25 at 5:31

add a comment |

olibre · Answer 13 · 2016-03-04 20:38:33Z

You want:

Bash builtin commands (i.e. portable)
Check TTY
Default answer
Timeout
Colored question

Snippet

do_xxxx=y                      # In batch mode => Default is Yes
[[ -t 0 ]] &&                  # If tty => prompt the question
read -t 5 -n 1 -p $'\e[1;32m
Do xxxx? (Y/n)\e[0m ' do_xxxx  # Store the answer in $do_xxxx
if [[ $do_xxxx =~ ^(y|Y|)$ ]]  # Do if 'y', 'Y' or empty
then
    xxxx
fi

Explanations

[[ -t 0 ]] && read ... => Call read only in TTY
read -t 5 => Timeout 5 seconds
read -n 1 => Wait for one character
$'\e[1;32m ... \e[0m ' => Print in green
(readable on both white/black backgrounds)
- [[ $do_xxxx =~ ^(y|Y|)$ ]] => bash regex

Timeout => Default answer is No

do_xxxx=y
[[ -t 0 ]] && {
read -t 5 -n 1 -p $'\e[1;32m
Do xxxx? (Y/n)\e[0m ' do_xxxx ||  # read 'fails' on timeout
do_xxxx=n ; }                     # Timeout => answer No
if [[ $do_xxxx =~ ^(y|Y|)$ ]]
then
    xxxx
fi

I like the inclusion of a timeout, nice feature. – Myrddin Emrys Mar 4 at 19:36 — Myrddin Emrys, Mar 4 at 19:36

julianromera · Answer 14 · 2014-05-22 11:07:15Z

up vote 5 down vote

Sorry for posting on such an old post. Some weeks ago I was facing a similar problem, in my case I needed a solution which also worked within an online installer-script, eg: curl -Ss https://raw.github.com/_____/installer.sh | bash

Using read yesno < /dev/tty works fine for me:

echo -n "These files will be uploaded. Is this ok? (y/n) "
read yesno < /dev/tty

if [ "x$yesno" = "xy" ];then

   # Yes
else

   # No
fi

Hope this helps someone.

edited May 22 '14 at 11:07

answered May 21 '14 at 11:22

julianromera

1,31921526

An important part of this is input validation. I think adapting my first example to accept tty input as you did would have done as well for you, and also gotten looping on bad input (imagine a few characters in the buffer; your method would force the user to always choose no). – Myrddin Emrys May 22 '14 at 13:03

add a comment |

Thorsten Staerk · Answer 15 · 2014-04-06 11:40:47Z

To get a nice ncurses-like inputbox use the command dialog like this:

#!/bin/bash
if (dialog --title "Message" --yesno "Want to do something risky?" 6 25)
# message box will have the size 25x6 characters
then 
    echo "Let's do something risky"
    # do something risky
else 
    echo "Let's stay boring"
fi

The dialog package is installed by default at least with SUSE Linux.

Joshua Goldberg · Answer 16 · 2015-04-08 19:30:25Z

up vote 3 down vote

One simple way to do this is with xargs -p or gnu parallel --interactive.

I like the behavior of xargs a little better for this because it executes each command immediately after the prompt like other interactive unix commands, rather than collecting the yesses to run at the end. (You can Ctrl-C after you get through the ones you wanted.)

e.g.,

echo *.xml | xargs -p -n 1 -J {} mv {} backup/

answered Apr 8 '15 at 19:30

Joshua Goldberg

1,8871226

Not bad, but xargs --interactive is limited to yes or no. As long as that's all you need that can be enough, but my original question gave an example with three possible results. I really like that it is streamable though; many common scenarios would benefit from its ability to be piped. – Myrddin Emrys Apr 9 '15 at 0:25

I see. My thinking was that "cancel" meant to simply stop all further execution, which this supports via Ctrl-C, but if you need to do something more complex on cancel (or on no) this won't suffice. – Joshua Goldberg Jun 7 '15 at 22:21

add a comment |

Ernest A · Answer 17 · 2013-12-28 17:50:02Z

Multiple choice version:

ask () {                        # $1=question $2=options
    # set REPLY
    # options: x=..|y=..
    while $(true); do
        printf '%s [%s] ' "$1" "$2"
        stty cbreak
        REPLY=$(dd if=/dev/tty bs=1 count=1 2> /dev/null)
        stty -cbreak
        test "$REPLY" != "$(printf '\n')" && printf '\n'
        (
            IFS='|'
            for o in $2; do
                if [ "$REPLY" = "${o%%=*}" ]; then
                    printf '\n'
                    break
                fi
            done
        ) | grep ^ > /dev/null && return
    done
}

Example:

$ ask 'continue?' 'y=yes|n=no|m=maybe'
continue? [y=yes|n=no|m=maybe] g
continue? [y=yes|n=no|m=maybe] k
continue? [y=yes|n=no|m=maybe] y
$

It will set REPLY to y (inside the script).

Myrddin Emrys · Answer 18 · 2015-06-05 06:37:02Z

up vote 2 down vote

As a friend of a one line command I used the following:

while [ -z $prompt ]; do read -p "Continue (y/n)?" choice;case "$choice" in y|Y ) prompt=true; break;; n|N ) exit 0;; esac; done; prompt=;

Written longform, it works like this:

while [ -z $prompt ];
  do read -p "Continue (y/n)?" choice;
  case "$choice" in
    y|Y ) prompt=true; break;;
    n|N ) exit 0;;
  esac;
done;
prompt=;

edited Jun 5 '15 at 6:37

Myrddin Emrys

14.1k102641

answered Jun 4 '15 at 19:03

ccDict

304312

Can you clarify the use of the prompt variable? Looks to me like it's wiped after the one liner, so how do you use the line to DO anything? – Myrddin Emrys Jun 5 '15 at 6:37

prompt is wiped after the while loop. Because I want the prompt variable to be initialized afterwards (since I am using the statement more often). Having this line in a shell-script will only proceed if y|Y is typed and exit if n|N is typed or repeat asking for input for everything else. – ccDict Jun 5 '15 at 6:42

add a comment |

jlettvin · Answer 19 · 2013-09-24 03:38:54Z

up vote 1 down vote

yn() {
  if [[ 'y' == `read -s -n 1 -p "[y/n]: " Y; echo $Y` ]];
  then eval $1;
  else eval $2;
  fi }
yn 'echo yes' 'echo no'
yn 'echo absent no function works too!'

edited Sep 24 '13 at 3:38

answered Sep 23 '13 at 20:59

jlettvin

430311

This seems complex and fragile. How about just yn(){ read -s -n 1 -p '[y/n]'; test "$REPLY" = "y" ; } yn && echo success || echo failure – tripleee May 21 '14 at 11:44

add a comment |

poxtron · Answer 20 · 2015-01-08 00:40:48Z

up vote 1 down vote

Inspired by the answers of @Mark and @Myrddin I created this function for a universal prompt

uniprompt(){
    while true; do
        echo -e "$1\c"
        read opt
        array=($2)
        case "${array[@]}" in  *"$opt"*) eval "$3=$opt";return 0;; esac
        echo -e "$opt is not a correct value\n"
    done
}

use it like this:

unipromtp "Select an option: (a)-Do one (x)->Do two (f)->Do three : " "a x f" selection
echo "$selection"

answered Jan 8 '15 at 0:40

poxtron

85118

I'm not a fan of the use of eval; just asking to be abused with evil input. – Myrddin Emrys Apr 9 '15 at 0:29

add a comment |

Alexander Löfqvist · Answer 21 · 2015-07-29 11:39:09Z

more generic would be:

function menu(){
    title="Question time"
    prompt="Select:"
    options=("Yes" "No" "Maybe")
    echo "$title"
    PS3="$prompt"
    select opt in "${options[@]}" "Quit/Cancel"; do
        case "$REPLY" in
            1 ) echo "You picked $opt which is option $REPLY";;
            2 ) echo "You picked $opt which is option $REPLY";;
            3 ) echo "You picked $opt which is option $REPLY";;
            $(( ${#options[@]}+1 )) ) clear; echo "Goodbye!"; exit;;
            *) echo "Invalid option. Try another one.";continue;;
         esac
     done
     return
}

brasofilo · Answer 22 · 2014-08-09 23:19:57Z

up vote -1 down vote

I suggest you use dialog...

Linux Apprentice: Improve Bash Shell Scripts Using Dialog

The dialog command enables the use of window boxes in shell scripts to make their use more interactive.

it's simple and easy to use, there's also a gnome version called gdialog that takes the exact same parameters, but shows it GUI style on X.

edited Aug 9 '14 at 23:19

brasofilo

17.7k948104

answered Oct 22 '08 at 17:14

Osama ALASSIRY

4,09841744

8

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. – Robotic Cat Aug 9 '14 at 21:29

For the casual reader, have look to a snippet using the dialog command here: stackoverflow.com/a/22893526/363573 – Stephan Dec 2 '14 at 19:41

add a comment |

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How do I prompt for input in a Linux shell script?

22 Answers 22

At least five answer for one generic question.

Edit 2015-10-29: Adding readline's history capacity

1. Posix generic solutions

Posix, but single key feature

Using dedicated tools

2. Bash specific solutions

Basic in line method

in line with single key feature

Using dedicated tools

3. Some tricks about dedicated tools

5. Using readline's history

You want:

Snippet

Explanations

Timeout => Default answer is No

Linux Apprentice: Improve Bash Shell Scripts Using Dialog

protected by Yu Hao Sep 24 '13 at 3:30

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How do I prompt for input in a Linux shell script?

22 Answers 22

At least five answer for one generic question.

Edit 2015-10-29: Adding readline's history capacity

1. Posix generic solutions

Posix, but single key feature

Using dedicated tools

2. Bash specific solutions

Basic in line method

in line with single key feature

Using dedicated tools

3. Some tricks about dedicated tools

5. Using readline's history

You want:

Snippet

Explanations

Timeout => Default answer is No

Linux Apprentice: Improve Bash Shell Scripts Using Dialog

protected by Yu Hao Sep 24 '13 at 3:30

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged linux bash shell scripting or ask your own question.

Visit Chat

Linked

Related

Hot Network Questions