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I have this read operation:

read -p "Please enter your name:" username

How could I verify the users name, in one line?

If it's not possible in a sane way in one line, maybe a Bash function putted inside a variable is a decent solution?

Name is just an example, it could be a password or any other common form value.

Verifying means here: Requesting the user to insert the name twice and to ensure the two values are the same.

Arcticooling
  • 1

2 Answers2

5

That the user typed (or, possibly, copied and pasted...) the same thing twice is usually done with two read calls, two variables, and a comparison.

read -p "Please enter foo" bar1
read -p "Please enter foo again" bar2
if [ "$bar1" != "$bar2" ]; then
   echo >&2 "foos did not match"
   exit 1
fi

This could instead be done with a while loop and condition variable that repeats the prompts-and-checks until a match is made, or possibly abstracted into a function call if there are going to be a lot of prompts for input.

thrig
  • 34,938
  • I assume that if I want to use this code in various other scripts, I could put the if statement and its variable in a file, source that file, and then use the two read operations on another file. Is that correct? – Arcticooling Feb 05 '18 at 08:26
  • for multiple usages a function would be more appropriate – thrig Feb 05 '18 at 15:10
3

To expand on thrig's answer and include the function you had requested:

Function

enter_thing () {
    unset matched
    while [[ -z "$matched" ]]; do
        read -rp "Please enter $@: " thing1
        read -rp "Please re-enter $@: " thing2
        if [[ "$thing1" == "$thing2" ]]; then
            matched=1
        else
            echo "Error! Input does not match" >&2
        fi
    done
    echo "$thing2"
}

In a script you could call it like:

username=$(enter_thing "name")
email=$(enter_thing "email")
password=$(enter_thing "password")
jesse_b
  • 37,005