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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting echoed prompt not appearing until after read command. Post 102498 by simonb on Saturday 18th of March 2006 04:43:21 PM
Old 03-18-2006
Question echoed prompt not appearing until after read command.

I have a script I am runing on a hacked CDLinux live CD called from /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

The part of th script in question goes like this.
Quote:

colour() {
case "$1" in
"shout" ) echo -ne "\033[1m\033[41m";;
"welcome" ) echo -ne "\033[1;33m\033[40m";;
"error" ) echo -ne "\033[1;31m\033[40m";;
"info" ) echo -ne "\033[1;36m\033[40m";;
"normal" ) echo -ne "\033[0m";;
* ) echo -ne "\033[0m";;
esac
}

while [ 0 ]; do
colour info
echo -n "Place name :"
read place_name
funnychars=`echo $place_name | tr -d '[a-z][A-Z][0-9] '`
if [ -z "$funnychars" ]; then break; fi
colour normal
echo
echo
colour error
echo "Letters, spaces and numbers only, please. Remove any $funnychars"
echo -n "from name. Try again."
colour normal
echo
done
colour normal
echo
When run from rc.local the prompt "Centre name :" and the colour change does not appear until after I type the input text and press return. Also, I noticed CTRL-C does not interrupt this script even when it pauses for keyboard input.

When I run the same script after logging from the console it all works as expected with the prompt appearing before the keyboard input.

Sorry if the colour change code isn't relavent here but I have a long debug loop that involves re-burning the CD to test this script in failure mode, so it's probably quicker to post the whole thing just in case.
 

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echo(1B)					     SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands						  echo(1B)

NAME
echo - echo arguments to standard output SYNOPSIS
/usr/ucb/echo [-n] [argument] DESCRIPTION
echo writes its arguments, separated by BLANKs and terminated by a NEWLINE, to the standard output. echo is useful for producing diagnostics in command files and for sending known data into a pipe, and for displaying the contents of envi- ronment variables. For example, you can use echo to determine how many subdirectories below the root directory (/) is your current directory, as follows: o echo your current-working-directory's full pathname o pipe the output through tr to translate the path's embedded slash-characters into space-characters o pipe that output through wc -w for a count of the names in your path. example% /usr/bin/echo "echo $PWD | tr '/' ' ' | wc -w" See tr(1) and wc(1) for their functionality. The shells csh(1), ksh(1), and sh(1), each have an echo built-in command, which, by default, will have precedence, and will be invoked if the user calls echo without a full pathname. /usr/ucb/echo and csh's echo() have an -n option, but do not understand back-slashed escape characters. sh's echo(), ksh's echo(), and /usr/bin/echo, on the other hand, understand the black-slashed escape characters, and ksh's echo() also understands a as the audible bell character; however, these commands do not have an -n option. OPTIONS
-n Do not add the NEWLINE to the output. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWscpu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
csh(1), echo(1), ksh(1), sh(1), tr(1), wc(1), attributes(5) NOTES
The -n option is a transition aid for BSD applications, and may not be supported in future releases. SunOS 5.11 3 Aug 1994 echo(1B)
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