Shell Programming and Scripting

I'm writing a basic ldapsearch script that prompts the user for their search criteria. The input they're being asked for is the search filter portion of the ldapsearch command. This string must be quoted. When the script executes the command it returns nothing. If I hard code a search filter it works fine. Snippet below. Any ideas?

Code:

# Search criteria
echo "Enter the attribute and value you wish to search for, e.g. \""cn=firstname lastname\"".  Be sure to enclose in quotes per example."
read SEARCHCRITERIA
echo "You entered ${SEARCHCRITERIA}"
idsldapsearch -h localhost -b o=searchbase ${SEARCHCRITERIA}

sample script execution (bold text is user input)

Code:

[root@host01 ~]# ./lsearch.sh
Enter the attribute and value you wish to search for, e.g. "cn=firstname lastname"".  Be sure to enclose in quotes per example.
"cn=first last"
You entered "cn=first last"
[root@usdl2-ln00-ap01 ~]#

I'm tracking down in the log file what is actually get sent. Haven't got there yet, it has limited access.

Just a suggestion: don't have the user include the quotes. Have he script add the quotes to what is entered if you need to.