CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashpromptuser-interaction
Georgi Stoyanov
Georgi Stoyanov

Reputation: 644

Bash Y/N prompt accepting also the ENTER key

I am trying to create a script a Y/n prompt in bash which in case of hitting the ENTER key to execute the script. So far I have created the script to accept only Yes/No answers and to read only the first letter and ignore the rest: 

while true; do
    read -p "Do you wish to remove this directory [Y/n]? " rmv
    rmv=${rmv,,}                                 # lower the letters in the rmv variable
    case $rmv in
        [y]* ) echo "YES"; break;;
        #[] ) echo "Enter Key"; break;;
        [n]* ) echo "NO"; exit;;
        * ) echo "Please answer yes or no! ";;   # repeat until valid answer
    esac
done

The idea is that in case of Y/y/yes/YES or Enter the script to execute some command, in case of No/N/n/no to break the loop and in case of invalid answer to ask the question again. I was thinking that the best will be to use OR "||" on the row with "Y" case.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2321

Answers (1)

Michael Jaros
Michael Jaros

Reputation: 4681

Inside your case statement, you can test for the empty string like this:

        "") echo "Enter Key"; break;;

Upvotes: 2

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