My version does not limit you to keyboard input; itt reads from standard input, which you can redirect to your heart's content. Refer to how I invoked it in my previous post.

In fact, my script is the most flexible since it can accept input from the terminal, from a file, from a pipe, from anywhere that you care to redirect. All of the other options are limited to a filename.

Regards,
Alister

---------- Post updated at 03:31 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:20 PM ----------

IFS affects how a line is split into fields. -d affects what a line is. Loosely speaking, in AWK parlance, IFS is akin to FS and -d to RS.

Without -d, \n is the default. read consumes the newline so it cannot be assigned to the target variable. When the variable expands to an empty string, printf substitutes the zeros seen.

You can see this happening back in post #4, in wisecracker's first response to your first post in this thread:
Regards,
Alister