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Creating a shell script to get input is rather easy. Shell scripts prompting input are generally more user friendly too. In this article I’ll show you how to read input from the bash shell. Take the example below:

<pre>
#!/bin/bash
 
echo "Shell Script To Get User Input";
 
while read inputline
do
what="$inputline"
echo $what;
 
if [ -z "${what}" ];
then
exit
fi
 
done

All it does is echo’s the introduction “Shell Script To Get User Input” and then goes right to the bash read input loop. The next line makes a variable so that we can echo it out and also check if its empty with the if [ -z part. If the script is empty we exit, if not we loop around another time.

This is a very basic example but it can easily be modified so that you can use bash to grab user input. If you have any trouble with this script drop me a comment and I’ll be happy to help you out.