Using variable in case statement - Shell Programming and Scripting

fialia · #1 (**permalink**) 05-09-2008

I want to do this:

Code:

Ex 1:
case $answer in
  1|2|3|4|5) echo $answer;;
  x) break;;
  *) echo "Invalid selection. Try again.";;
esac

But I need the part "1|2|3|4|5" to be fetched from a variable, like so:

Code:

Ex 2:
case $answer in
  $cases) echo $answer;;
  x) break;;
  *) echo "Invalid selection. Try again.";;
esac

So if the input is 1-n, I want my program to execute (its not really echo I plan on executing, but I will send $answer as the action's input).

Is that possible? What I really want to know is, can the number of cases be variable depending on when the script is run? If so, how do I achieve it?

When written like in ex 2 my input is interpreted as * every time. I have also tried replacing "$cases" with "´echo $cases´" with the same result.

The script is written in bash and runs on Sun Solaris 9.

guruparan18 · #2 (**permalink**) 05-10-2008

Try this

Quote:

bash-2.03$ b=[1,2,3,4]
bash-2.03$ case $ans in
> $b) echo $ans ;;
> x) break ;;
> *) echo "Error"
> esac

It should work.

fialia · #3 (**permalink**) 05-12-2008

Yes, that works. Thank you very much!

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