Bash Scripting-8- Taking user input with READ command in shell script

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Bash Scripting-8- Taking user input with READ
command in shell script
Posted by Prince DAN January 13, 2020 in DevOps
Up until now, we have only read about using
variables that we have mentioned inside the
script but thats not a good way. We might be
required to use a different value for a variable
we then need to update script each and every
time. But there is a simple solution to this,
taking user input with read command in the shell
script. Recommended Read Install EPEL repository
on CentOS/RHEL 6, 7 8 Also Read Bash
Scripting-9- using UNTIL WHILE loop in shell
script Using read command in a shell script
allows us to assign a user-entered value to a
variable. Lets show an example of how we can
use read command in shell script, !/bin/bash ec
ho what is your name ?
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read var echo You are most welcome var So,
here we have not mentioned a variable beforehand
and provided the name of the variable, just
after read command. So now when the script is
executed, it will ask for the name then will
assign the value to the variable named var. In
the next step, it will print the welcome message
along with the user-provided name. Now lets
discuss a rather complex script than the one
mentioned above, !/bin/bash echo Please enter
the full path of file/directory (ex-
/home/ec2-user/new.txt) read path for file in
path do if -d file then echo file is
a directory elif -f file then echo
file is a file else echo No file
found done So this script will take a
directory or file path as input based on the
path provided, it will let us know whether the
entered path is a file, directory or none of
those. We can also ask for some sensitive
information using read command, for that we need
to enter option -s, this option will hide the
entered information, read -s variable_name
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Now along with the read command, there is another
way we can ask for user input from a bash
script, using the following parameters, 0, when
used in script prints name of the script, 1
will be the first value provided when running the
script, 2 will the second value provided when
running the script, will print the total
number of values provided. Lets see an example
of this as well, !/bin/bash echo Name of the
script is 0 echo first value is 1 echo
second value is 2 echo total numberof values
are sum1 2 echo sum of 1 2 is
sum Now when we will execute the script, we
must do like this, sh script.sh 5 15
Notice that we have mentioned 5 15 when
executing the script. So, here 0 is the name of
script i.e. script.sh, 1 is first number i.e.
5, 2 is the second 15. Similarly, we can add as
variables in our script call them when running
the script.
We now end this tutorial on using read command in
shell script. Please feel free to send in any
questions, queries or suggestions using the
comment box below.
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