Search icon CANCEL
Arrow left icon
Explore Products
Best Sellers
New Releases
Books
Videos
Audiobooks
Learning Hub
Conferences
Free Learning
Arrow right icon
Arrow up icon
GO TO TOP
Learning Linux Shell Scripting

You're reading from   Learning Linux Shell Scripting Unleash the power of shell scripts to solve real-world problems by breaking through the practice of writing tedious code

Arrow left icon
Product type Paperback
Published in Dec 2015
Publisher
ISBN-13 9781785286216
Length 306 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Arrow right icon
Author (1):
Arrow left icon
Ganesh Sanjiv Naik Ganesh Sanjiv Naik
Author Profile Icon Ganesh Sanjiv Naik
Ganesh Sanjiv Naik
Arrow right icon
View More author details
Toc

Table of Contents (14) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Getting Started and Working with Shell Scripting FREE CHAPTER 2. Drilling Deep into Process Management, Job Control, and Automation 3. Using Text Processing and Filters in Your Scripts 4. Working with Commands 5. Exploring Expressions and Variables 6. Neat Tricks with Shell Scripting 7. Performing Arithmetic Operations in Shell Scripts 8. Automating Decision Making in Scripts 9. Working with Functions 10. Using Advanced Functionality in Scripts 11. System Startup and Customizing a Linux System 12. Pattern Matching and Regular Expressions with sed and awk Index

Interactive Shell scripts – reading user input


The read command is a shell built-in command for reading data from a file or keyboard.

The read command receives the input from the keyboard or a file until it receives a newline character. Then, it converts the newline character into a null character:

  1. Read a value and store it in the variable, shown as follows:

    read variable
    echo $variable
    

    This will receive text from the keyboard. The received text will be stored in the variable.

  2. Command read with prompt. Whenever we need to display the prompt with certain text, we use the –p option. The option -p displays the text that is placed after –p on the screen:

    #!/bin/bash
    # following line will print "Enter value: " and then read data
    # The received text will be stored in variable value
    read -p "Enter value :  " value

    Output:

    Enter value : abcd
    
  3. If the variable name is not supplied next to the read command, then the received data or text will be stored in a special built-in variable called REPLY. Let's write...

lock icon The rest of the chapter is locked
Register for a free Packt account to unlock a world of extra content!
A free Packt account unlocks extra newsletters, articles, discounted offers, and much more. Start advancing your knowledge today.
Unlock this book and the full library FREE for 7 days
Get unlimited access to 7000+ expert-authored eBooks and videos courses covering every tech area you can think of
Renews at R$50/month. Cancel anytime