CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
Neil Widdowson
Neil Widdowson

Reputation: 15

Bash script is not asking for user input?

I have this bash code:

#!/bin/bash
ls "$SOURCE" > cplist.txt
cat cplist.txt | while read FILE; do
    echo "Would you like to copy $FILE? y/n"
    read ANSWER
    if [ "$ANSWER" = "y" ]; then
        cp -v "$FILE" ./Destination;
    else
        echo "File NOT coppied"
    fi
done

The idea is to make a list of all files in a folder, then ask the user each file they want to copy to the destination folder. Currently this script wont allow user input after: "would you like to copy $file? y/n". I cant work out why as I'm very new to this kind of thing. Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 325

Answers (2)

Lajos Veres
Lajos Veres

Reputation: 13725

You make the cplist.txt to the remaining part's standard input where the read tries to read from.

Upvotes: 0

Tom Fenech
Tom Fenech

Reputation: 74595

You've run into problems as you're using two separate calls to read but you're making things more complicated than they need to be. Try something like this:

#!/bin/bash

for file in "$source"/*; do
    echo "Would you like to copy $file? y/n"
    read -r answer
    if [ "$answer" = "y" ]; then
        cp -v "$file" ./Destination;
    else
        echo "File NOT copied"
    fi
done

Instead of parsing ls (which is generally considered a cardinal sin), this uses the shell's built-in glob expansion to match everything in the directory $source. I have added the -r switch to read, which is a good idea in general. I have also made your variable names lowercase. Uppercase variables should be reserved for built-in variables such as $PATH, which you certainly don't want to ever accidentally overwrite.

Upvotes: 1

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