Bash Scripting, Respond to Keypress

Question

I built a tiny menu to use in a bash terminal with multiple options to select via number keys.

#!/bin/bash
PS3='Teleport to ... '
options=("→ option 1" "→ option 2" "Quit")
select opt in "${options[@]}"
do
    case $opt in
        "→ option 1")
            echo "option 1"
            break
            ;;
        "→ option 2")
            echo "option 2"
            break
            ;;
        "Quit")
            break
            ;;
        *) echo invalid option
            break
            ;;
    esac
done

At the moment I still need to confirm the selection by pressing enter. Is it possible to make the script respond to the input of the first pressed key directly?

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-17 11:06:50Z

2

read -n 1 reads one character. You cannot use select with it, though, so you have to write the while loop yourself.

answered Oct 17, 2012 at 11:06

choroba

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Comments

Zsolt Botykai · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-17 11:09:24Z

1

Yep, with bash (and not sh!) you can use something like:

_KEY=
read -d '' -sn1 _KEY

answered Oct 17, 2012 at 11:09

Zsolt Botykai

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