5)An enhancement to read/readline, such that one can specify the initial
value with which the buffer is filled.
Currently, we can do:
read -ep 'Enter your name: ' NAME
and I might type "Richad Neill". #Note the deliberate typo.
If the script recognises this as invalid, the best it can do is:
echo "Name not recognised"
read -ep 'Re-enter your name: ' NAME
and the user must retype it in full.
I'd like to propose adding an "-i" option for initial value:
echo "Name not recognised"
read -ep "Please correct your name: " -i "$NAME"
The shell prints:
Please correct your name: Richad Neill
where the latter part is now editable.
Thus the really nice editing features of readline can be used for
updating values already stored in variables. This is extremely useful
when the value is quite long.
Is this the same as
read -ep "Please correct your name: $NAME" NAME
?
No - that isn't what I meant. What I want to do is:
1)Print the text:
"Please correct your name: "
without a trailing newline.
2)Create an editable buffer (using readline), which is initialised
with the current value of the variable $NAME and printed to screen.
3)The user edits the buffer as desired, and when he presses ENTER,
its contents is assigned to the variable NAME.
In the example I gave, with my proposed -i option, the script would
present the user with this:
Please correct your name: Richad Neill
^^^^^^^^^^^^*
the cursor position starts at the *, but can be moved around anywhere
within the ^^^^. So the typo could be corrected by keying:
Alt-B Ctrl-B, Ctrl-B, r, ENTER
whereas currently, the user must type in the full string from scratch.
Is that clear? Sorry it's hard to explain without a diagram.
Richard
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