looping an array to populate menu for "dialog"

kushalkoolwal · 01-29-2009, 02:31 PM

Hi,

I have a array called "usb_device" which has 3 elements as follows:

Code:

/dev/sda
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdc

Now I am trying to display these elements with the 'dialog' utility like this:

Code:

dialog --clear --title "List USB Devices" \
       --menu "Move using [UP] [DOWN} Arrow keys, Hit [ENTER] key to select." 15 50 5 \
for (( i = 0; i < ${#get_usb_devices[@]}; i++ ))
do
$i $get_usb_devices \
done

exit 0

However when I try to run this I get following error:

Code:

./detect_usb.sh: line 10: syntax error near unexpected token `('
./detect_usb.sh: line 10: `for (( i = 0; i < ${#get_usb_devices[@]}; i++ ))'

Not sure what's going wrong here.

indienick · 01-29-2009, 03:28 PM

I do not think this kind of construct is easily possible within Bash - in Common Lisp though, it would be quite simple, but that's besides the point.

I think you are going to have to work some magic with grep and awk (maybe sed, too) and wrap it in $() - see example. I would provide an example, but I have never used awk and/or sed before.

Example:

Code:

dialog --clear --title "List USB Devices" \
       --menu "Move using [UP] [DOWN} Arrow keys, Hit [ENTER] key to select." 15 50 5 \
       $(grep_awk_and_sed_magic)

burschik · 01-30-2009, 12:54 AM

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to achieve, but it looks as if you want to add stuff to the command line of a program (dialog in this case). For that, you need xargs, unless you want to build the entire command line in advance, which is also possible.

kushalkoolwal · 01-30-2009, 01:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by burschik

I'm not entirely sure what you are trying to achieve, but it looks as if you want to add stuff to the command line of a program (dialog in this case). For that, you need xargs, unless you want to build the entire command line in advance, which is also possible.

What I am trying to is to just display a menu from my array - get_usb_devices. The utility dialog with --menu option expects two parameters for each item. Here is a simple example of using menu with dialog:

Code:

dialog --clear --title "List USB Devices" \
       --menu "Move using [UP] [DOWN} Arrow keys, Hit [ENTER] key to select." 15 50 5 \
1. "usb hard drive"
2. "usb flash drive"
3. "usb cd-rom"

Now instead of the above three items I would like to display the items from my array. Try running the above piece of code and you will see what I am trying to say.

Thanks

burschik · 01-30-2009, 02:20 AM

So my assumption was correct. Use xargs.