How to read user input into a variable in Bash?

I'm trying to create a script that simplifies the process of creating a new user on an iOS device. Here are the steps broken down.

fullname="USER INPUT"
user="USER INPUT"
group=$user
uid=1000
gid=1000
home=/var/$user
echo "$group:*:$gid:$user" >> /private/etc/group
echo "$user::$uid:$gid::0:0:$fullname:$home:/bin/sh" >> /private/etc/master.passwd
passwd $user
mkdir $home
chown $user:$group $home

As you can see some fields require input. How can I request input for a variable in script?

5 Answers

Use read -p:

# fullname="USER INPUT"
read -p "Enter fullname: " fullname
# user="USER INPUT"
read -p "Enter user: " user

If you like to confirm:

read -p "Continue? (Y/N): " confirm && [[ $confirm == [yY] || $confirm == [yY][eE][sS] ]] || exit 1

You should also quote your variables to prevent pathname expansion and word splitting with spaces:

# passwd "$user"
# mkdir "$home"
# chown "$user:$group" "$home"

4

Yep, you'll want to do something like this:

echo -n "Enter Fullname: "
read fullname

Another option would be to have them supply this information on the command line. Getopts is your best bet there.

Using getopts in bash shell script to get long and short command line options

0

Try this

#/bin/bash
read -p "Enter a word: " word
echo "You entered $word"

Also you can try zenity !

user=$(zenity --entry --text 'Please enter the username:') || exit 1

One line is read from the standard input, or from the file descriptor fd supplied as an argument to the -u option, split into words as described above in Word Splitting, and the first word is assigned to the first name, the second word to the second name, and so on. If there are more words than names, the remaining words and their intervening delimiters are assigned to the last name.

echo "bash is awesome." | (read var1 var2; echo -e "Var1: $var1 \nVar2: $var2")

bash will be var1
is awesome will be var2
echo -e enable interpretation of backslash escapes from ubuntu manual.

---

so the full code can be:

echo -n "Enter Fullname: "
read fullname
echo "your full name is $fullname."
echo -n "test type more than 2 word: "
read var1 var2; echo -e
read var1 var2; echo -e "Var1: $var1 \nVar2: $var2")

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