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Previous: 44.12 Trapping Exits Caused by Interrupts Chapter 44
Shell Programming for the Uninitiated
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44.13 read: Reading from the Keyboard

The Bourne shell read command reads a line of one or more words from the keyboard (or standard input) [5] and stores the words in one or more shell variables. This is usually what you use to read an answer from the keyboard. For example:

[5] Some early versions of read don't handle < redirection (13.1); they can only read from the terminal.

echo -n "Type the filename: "
read filename

Some Bourne shells have a built-in function named line that reads a line from standard input and writes it to standard output. Use it this way:

value=`line`

The grabchars (45.32) program lets you read from the keyboard without needing to press RETURN.

- JP


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