have read command few first chars. fed by CL

[almahdi]

is it possible to have the *read* command few first characters in buffer is
fed by way of script code / CLI



--
Sent from: http://gnu-bash.2382.n7.nabble.com/

Re: have read command few first chars. fed by CL

On 03/09/2020 15:47, almahdi wrote:


is it possible to have the *read* command few first characters in buffer is
fed by way of script code / CLI


From "help read":

-N nchars return only after reading exactly NCHARS characters, unless
  EOF is encountered or read times out, ignoring any
  delimiter

--
Kerin Millar

Re: have read command few first chars. fed by CL

[Greg Wooledge]

On Thu, Sep 03, 2020 at 07:47:25AM -0700, almahdi wrote:
> 
> is it possible to have the *read* command few first characters in buffer is
> fed by way of script code / CLI

It's a bit unclear what you're really trying to do here, but I'm guessing
you want to pre-populate the user's input for a read command, to provide
a "default" that can be edited.

If you use read with the -e option (to enable readline), you can also use
the -i option.

  -euse Readline to obtain the line
  -i text   use TEXT as the initial text for Readline

unicorn:~$ read -p 'What is your name? ' -e -i "$LOGNAME" -r name
What is your name? greg_

Where _ represents the cursor.  The string "greg" is pre-populated
from the -i option, and can be backspaced or whatever.