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Full Discussion: Using read to prompt for editable user input in Bash 3
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Using read to prompt for editable user input in Bash 3 Post 302736929 by Don Cragun on Wednesday 28th of November 2012 07:05:13 AM
Old 11-28-2012
A simpler portable way to do the same thing is:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
default=user1
printf "Please enter the username you would like to add (%s): " "$default"
read input
USERNAME=${input:-$default}
echo USERNAME is $USERNAME

It should work with any version of bash, ksh, or any other POSIX conforming shell.
The only portable option to the read utility is -r.

Note that I used printf instead of echo because the way you specify printing a prompt without a newline using echo varies from system to system.
 

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LEARN ABOUT LINUX

shtool-echo

SHTOOL-ECHO.TMP(1)					      GNU Portable Shell Tool						SHTOOL-ECHO.TMP(1)

NAME

       shtool-echo - GNU shtool echo(1) extensional command

SYNOPSIS

       shtool echo [-n|--newline] [-e|--expand] string

DESCRIPTION

       shtool echo is an echo(1) style command which prints string to stdout and optionally provides special expansion constructs (terminal bold
       mode, environment details, date, etc) and newline control. The trick of this command is that it provides a portable -n option and hides the
       gory details needed to find out the environment details under option -e.

OPTIONS

       The following command line options are available.

       -n, --newline
	   By default, output is written to stdout followed by a "newline" (ASCII character 0x0a). If option -n is used, this newline character is
	   omitted.

       -e, --expand
	   If option -e is used, string can contain special "%x" constructs which are expanded before the output is written. Currently the
	   following constructs are recognized:

	   %B  switch terminal mode to bold display mode.

	   %b  switch terminal mode back to normal display mode.

	   %u  the current user name.

	   %U  the current user id (numerical).

	   %g  the current group name.

	   %G  the current group id (numerical).

	   %h  the current hostname (without any domain extension).

	   %d  the current domain name.

	   %D  the current day of the month.

	   %M  the current month (numerical).

	   %m  the current month name.

	   %Y  the current year.

EXAMPLE

	#   shell script
	shtool echo -n -e "Enter your name [%B%u%b]: "; read name
	shtool echo -e "Your Email address might be %u@%h%d"
	shtool echo -e "The current date is %D-%m-%Y"

HISTORY

       The GNU shtool echo command was originally written by Ralf S.  Engelschall <rse@engelschall.com> in 1998 for Website META Language (WML)
       under the name buildinfo. It was later taken over into GNU shtool.

SEE ALSO

       shtool(1), echo(1).

18-Jul-2008							   shtool 2.0.8 						SHTOOL-ECHO.TMP(1)
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