Reputation: 9486
while read dir ev file; do
# do stuff
done
The part I can't find an explanation for is the read dir ev
part. I'm not familiar with Bash. I mainly do PHP and MySQL. Can anyone explain?
Thanks.
Upvotes: 1
Views: 341
Reputation: 527488
The short version is, it takes a single line at a time from the input and assigns individual fields from it into variables.
read dir ev file
would read lines one by one and expect each line to contain 3 items. It would then assign the first item into a variable named dir
, the second into a variable named ev
, and the third into a variable named file
.
From the output of help read
:
(Edit: more readable version here: http://ss64.com/bash/read.html)
read: read [-ers] [-a array] [-d delim] [-i text] [-n nchars] [-N nchars] [-p prompt] [-t timeout] [-u fd] [name ...]
Read a line from the standard input and split it into fields.
Reads a single line from the standard input, or from file descriptor FD
if the -u option is supplied. The line is split into fields as with word
splitting, and the first word is assigned to the first NAME, the second
word to the second NAME, and so on, with any leftover words assigned to
the last NAME. Only the characters found in $IFS are recognized as word
delimiters.
If no NAMEs are supplied, the line read is stored in the REPLY variable.
Options:
-a array assign the words read to sequential indices of the array
variable ARRAY, starting at zero
-d delim continue until the first character of DELIM is read, rather
than newline
-e use Readline to obtain the line in an interactive shell
-i text Use TEXT as the initial text for Readline
-n nchars return after reading NCHARS characters rather than waiting
for a newline, but honor a delimiter if fewer than NCHARS
characters are read before the delimiter
-N nchars return only after reading exactly NCHARS characters, unless
EOF is encountered or read times out, ignoring any delimiter
-p prompt output the string PROMPT without a trailing newline before
attempting to read
-r do not allow backslashes to escape any characters
-s do not echo input coming from a terminal
-t timeout time out and return failure if a complete line of input is
not read withint TIMEOUT seconds. The value of the TMOUT
variable is the default timeout. TIMEOUT may be a
fractional number. If TIMEOUT is 0, read returns success only
if input is available on the specified file descriptor. The
exit status is greater than 128 if the timeout is exceeded
-u fd read from file descriptor FD instead of the standard input
Exit Status:
The return code is zero, unless end-of-file is encountered, read times out,
or an invalid file descriptor is supplied as the argument to -u.
Upvotes: 3