Using Bash to input stuff into c program

Question

Hi I am trying to create a bash program to call a program and input menu picks into it.

For example my program runs

Hello world:
1) Item 1
2) Item 2
Enter : 2

Item 2 Menu
1) sub Item A
2) sub item B
enter: 1

I tried doing $ 2|1|./program and $./program|2|1

But it either fails or it just loops forever and doesn't get to the second menu.

Is it possible to do this?

Possibly you could do it with expect

sorpigal
– sorpigal

2011-12-13 17:04:27 +00:00
Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 17:04 — sorpigal
– sorpigal, Commented Dec 13, 2011 at 17:04

sorpigal · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-13 17:25:38Z

3

Presuming a program that works essentially like this one:

pmenu () {
    printf '%s) %s\n' "$1" "$2"
}

m1 () {
    pmenu 1 'Item 1'
    pmenu 2 'Item 2'
}
m2 () {
    pmenu 1 'sub Item A'
    pmenu 2 'sub Item B'
}

printf 'Hello, World:\n'

m1
read -p "enter: " m

case "$m" in
    1 ) m2 ;;
    2 ) m2 ;;
esac

read -p "enter: " m

echo "You chose: $m"

Then you can just say

printf '2\n1\n' | program

For anything less straightforward you may need to learn expect, which is designed for this sort of thing.

answered Dec 13, 2011 at 17:25

sorpigal

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1 Comment

Shawn Chin Over a year ago

Or, if one is not able/bothered to learn expect, there's autoexpect which can record a session and generate an expect script that can be used to replay the session.

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