How to ask...??? Post: 7496

Sponsored Content

Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users How to ask...??? Post 7496 by LivinFree on Thursday 27th of September 2001 02:40:29 AM

09-27-2001

Registered User

Well, to ask a questions, and record the answer in memory, use the "read" builtin command. Here's an example (I wrote it in sh instead of ksh, since I don't know which you're using, if either- this should be portable between the two, with the exception of the echo statement):

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Simple example to read in a line, then echo it out

# If you're using Linux, you'll need to use "echo -e"
# instead of "echo".

echo "Enter a string: \c"

# The \c tells echo not to add a new line

read input

# That's where it takes your input and stores it into the 
# variable "input" - you can name this whatever you want

echo "\nThe \$input variable was: $input"

# The "\n" forces echo to insert a new line at that spot

Of course this script isn't of much use to anyone, but it gives an example of using read.
Hope that helps.

LivinFree

View Public Profile for LivinFree

Find all posts by LivinFree

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)