Prompt for user input in a shell script

Shell scripts can be powerful for automation. Sometimes, we want to ask the user for input. Let’s have a look at a few options that can be very handy for your next shell script!

Fill a variable with input provided by the user

If we like the user to provide us with some details, like a name, email address, or hostname, we can use the read command.

read -p "What is your name? " name
echo "Your name is: ${name}"

How does it work? The read -p asks for user input and stores the result in the variable $name. On the second line we use this to display the value provided.

Prompt for a Yes/No answer

while true; do
    read -p "Do you want to continue? " yesno
    case $yesno in
        [Yy]*)
            echo "You entered Yes!"
            # Insert here a task to do
            break
        ;;
        [Nn]*)
            # Exit the program, as user answered "No"
            exit
        ;;
        *)
            echo "Please answer Yes (y) or No (n)."
        ;;
    esac
done

So how does this work?

Step 1: Wait

The while true makes the program go into a loop.

Step 2: Ask for user input and process it

As there is a read -p directly after the loop, it will wait for user input and put the result in the variable $yesno. If that is a Y (or y), it will perform the step related to that. The asterisk behind the [Yy] allows the user to input Yes, or Yup, or Yeah, as long as it starts with a small or capital Y.

Step 3: Perform the action

After the choice has been made, the action will be performed. If we answer N/n/No/no/Nope/NOK/etc, the program will stop as there is an exit command. In case the answer was something with a Y/y, then we first will perform the action, followed by a break. This break stops the while true loop, otherwise we get stuck into that.