UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi all,

I am using a script which is as follows: It reads a character.
I want to check if the character is a backspace character or some other character.

read -n 1 x
if [ $x='\b' ]; then
echo "backspace detected"
else
echo "some other character"
fi

Thanks in advance.

There is no straight forward way to compare the backspace.But there are some other way like ,converting the character to ascii value and compare that with particular ascii value of the backspace.

ascii value of the backspace is 8.But when I print the ascii value of backspace in my system it prints 127.it is the ascii value of DEL.So I used 127 in my code.You just change that value to 8 if needed.

Code:

read -n 1 x
x=`echo $x | tr -d "\n" | od -An -t dC`
if [ $x  -eq 127 ]; then # Change the 127 to 8 if it need
echo "backspace detected"
else
echo "some other character"
fi

Thanks