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Somehow I'm not able to read the trailing \n sign into the REPLY variable. Under any circumstances I want to avoid a blank line that results from the \n being echoed by read but echo one in case of another character. Given:

declare -l REPLY
read >&2 -r -N 1 -p "Acknowledged? (y):" REPLY
if [[ "$REPLY" != $'\n' ]]; then
  echo >&2
fi

For me a possible workaround is it to make read to suppress (-s) echoing the input. But ideally the user should see the single character he input after the prompt.

Also IFS= read -d'' doesn't get me the \n character into the variable.

Any ideas?

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
2

FWIW, your code works for me.

$ echo | bash -c 'read -rN1; echo "$BASH_VERSION <$REPLY>"'
4.2.36(1)-release <
>

With -N, no need to set IFS, and NL does end up in $REPLY. An empty $REPLY would only mean NUL (<Ctrl-Space>) or EOF or an error (exit status would be non-zero though for those two)

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0

Read uses \n as its record separator, so it will never be in $REPLY. The newline you are seeing is as a result of echo. If you're wanting to check for only a newline on one line (ie. a blank line), one of these tests will work:

[[ $REPLY == "" ]] # true if line is empty
(( ${#REPLY} )) # true if line is not empty

Note that since you don't invoke read with IFS=, this will also match input that consists solely of whitespace.

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  • I tried with IFS= and -d'' but no luck. Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 14:27
  • @TimFriske You need to use -d '' rather than -d'', otherwise read will think you're passing no arguments to -d. What are you hoping to achieve by reading the actual newline, though? Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 14:38
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As Chris mentioned, it's a separator, however to check the string length, you would do the following:

if [ -z "$REPLY" -o "$REPLY" == "y" ]; then
    echo "It was acknowledged"
else
    echo "Not acknowledged"
    exit 1
fi
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3
  • 1
    This will break if $REPLY contains any whitespace, it needs to be quoted appropriately. Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 14:42
  • Quote the variable; there's no need to quote y. Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 16:49
  • It would also break for some values of $REPLY like = or '('... Don't use -o, use two [ commands separated by && and don't forget to quote your variables (and use = instead of ==). Commented Nov 19, 2012 at 10:22

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