CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellshksh
ady6831983
ady6831983

Reputation: 133

Dynamically read and store values in variables in shell

I am trying to do this...

echo "Enter the number of fruits\n"
read fruit

echo $inp # this will print the number of fruits to enter

if fruit is 4

the script should be able to dynamically ask the user to input [4] fruits and store it into 4 variable like below.

fruit1=apple
fruit2=jack fruit
fruit3=pineapple
fruit4=grapes

i tried the below, but that doesn't help 

for i in `seq 1 $fruit`
                    do
                            echo "Enter fruit$i\n"
                            read fruit[$i]
                            echo "fruit[$i]"
                    done

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 357

Answers (2)

mirabilos
mirabilos

Reputation: 5327

This is the ksh88- and pdksh-compatible version:

count=4
set -A fruits
i=0
while (( i < count )); do
    echo "Enter fruit$i"
    read fruits[i]
    (( i += 1 ))
done
echo "${fruits[@]}"

Tested with /bin/ksh (ksh88) on Solaris 8, and pdksh on MirBSD (whose native mksh supports the +=() notation, but on which I have other shells installed for delta testing).

Upvotes: 1

karakfa
karakfa

Reputation: 67507

You can grow the array dynamically at each step. Assume you start with the count, initialize the empty array and add elements one by one.

count=4; fruits=(); 
for i in `seq "$count"`; 
       do read f; fruits+=( "$f" ); 
       done; 
echo "${fruits[@]}"

works in version: Version AJM 93t+ 2010-06-21.

This works with BASH in AIX

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions