Bash - Read user input: URLs without the enter key stroke

make · 09-23-2010, 01:01 AM

Here's a challenge I've been struggling for months with:

I have a bash script that reads URL addresses of our internal server and then executes some test commands on them. Something like this:

Code:

read -p "Enter URL: " url
sh execute-what-ever-to $url

After copy-pasting the URL the user taps the enter key and the script proceeds, but here comes the tricky part: I want this to work without the need to press the enter key after copy-pasting the URL.

"read -n" does not work in this case, as the URLs vary greatly in length. However, the URLs always end to the same string. They could be like "http://url1/END", "http://url2/END" and so on. So this ending string "END" could be theoretically used to recognize that the whole URL has been pasted.

Any easy solution? Bash, perl, python... others?

ntubski · 09-23-2010, 07:46 AM

You can read one letter at a time:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

url=''
echo -n 'Enter URL: '
while grep -qv 'END$' <<<"$url" ; do
    read -n1 next
    url="$url$next"
done
echo

sh execute-what-ever-to "$url"

make · 09-23-2010, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ntubski

You can read one letter at a time:

BIG thanks to you! This was the kind of solution I was actually looking for, I was thinking about a loop for reading letter-by-letter, but never got it working on my own.

Again, thank you!