Shell Programming and Scripting

When I run the script I have just created, I get a strange scenario around the following code:

echo "Check for duplicate UID's, each user should have a unique user ID (UID)"
echo "IF a UID is displayed fix or document why it is required!"
echo "Press enter to continue!"
read a
cut -d: -f3 /etc/passwd | sort -n | uniq -d
echo
echo "Verify current directory (.) does not exist in root's PATH!"

after going through most of the script and using the 'read a' as a pausing mechanism, when I hit enter at the above point instead of getting the correct value returned from the cut line, it just sits at a cursor, and hangs; it just adds a line for everytime you hit return. Now if I take the 'read a ' out at this point and just let it run right through the string works as it is supposed to. Can anyone see why it would behave in this fashion?

Very strange! It's almost as if your tty settings aren't correct and return is being seen as a line feed only. Try running the script with the -x option to echo what's going on or even truss it.