With the Bash shell, it is possible to create simple menus with the help of the select
built-in command.
The syntax of select is as follows:
PS3=prompting-text select VARIABLE in item1 item2 item3 do commands done
The advantage of a menu with select
is that we can have an endless loop with it. We can have a condition in which we exit the loop.
In the following script select_01.sh
, we show the menu with five options such as a
, bc
, def
, ghi
, and jkl
. The script will execute the command inside do
and done
:
#!/bin/bash select var1 in a bc def ghi jkl do echo "Present value of var1 is $var1 done
Let's test the program:
$ chmod +x select_01.sh $ ./select_01.sh
The following will be the output after executing the preceding commands:
1) a 2) bc 3) def 4) ghi 5) jkl #? 2 "Present value of var1 is bc #? 4 "Present value of var1 is ghi #? 5 "Present value of var1 is jkl #? Press ^C to quit
We...