Read User Input | Shell Scripting

This is a multipart blog article series where I am going to explain the concepts of shell scripting and how to write a shell script in Linux, UNIX or Mac based systems. You can also follow this tutorial blog using windows but for that you have to install a bash from.

In this article we will see that how can we take user input in shell, and then print them on the screen.

User input

• read command is used to take the input from the user. Like this read name
• We store the input in the variable and then we can use that variable wherever we want.
• If we want to take multiple inputs, then we can simply do that by passing multiple variables after read command. Like this read name1 name2 name3
• If we want to take the input in the same line in which message is shown, we can do this by this command read –p ‘<message>’ <variable_name>. We use –p flag with read to this.
• If you do not want to show the input user writing on the screen (silent input), just like when you type password, you can use -sp flag after read to this.
• We can also take the input in the array from the user by using -a after read command.
• When we do not write any variable name after the read command, then the input will go inside the built-in variable REPLY and we can call it to see or access the data of the input.

Practical code file for this article

So this was all about reading user input. Hope you liked it and learned something new from it.

If you have any doubt, question, queries related to this topic or just want to share something with me, then please feel free to contact me.

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