Simple Menu for User Input

Posted by gevery77 in Bourne shell scripting

This script will create an input screen in BASH that allows the user to enter information just as they would in a window. This is to show the use of simple functions as well as the tput command. The command “tput cup” allows the developer to place the cursor anywhere on the screen. There are many more commands that tput recognizes. See the main page for more information.


#!/bin/bash

## Clears the screen and builds the user input screen

function screen() {
clear
cat < ####################################################################
## Main Screen for Input ##
####################################################################
## ##
## User Name: _________________________________________ ##
## Directory: _________________________________________ ##
## Group: _________________________________________ ##
## ##
####################################################################
## Preferences ## Other Info ##
####################################################################
## Show Email? _ ## Receive News? _ ##
## Show Address? _ ## Receive RSS? _ ##
####################################################################
EOF
}

## This will echo out the contents of the helpString variable
## below the screen
function showHelp() {
tput cup 14 0
## Clear out the last information
echo " "
tput cup 14 0
echo $helpString
}
## Display the screen
screen

## Set up the help information, and call the showHelp function
## that displays it
helpString="Enter the user or press ENTER to quit"
showHelp
tput cup 4 18
read username
## If they don't enter a username, quit
if [ "$username" = "" ]
then
exit
fi

## Now go through and get the other data
helpString="Enter Home Directory"
showHelp
tput cup 5 18
read directory

helpString="What group does $username belong to?"
showHelp
tput cup 6 18
read group

helpString="Do you want to show the Email Address to others? [y/n"
showHelp
tput cup 11 19
read showEmail

helpString="Do you want to show your Home Address to others [y/n]"
showHelp
tput cup 12 19
read showAddress

helpString="Would you like to receive the News Letter?"
showHelp
tput cup 11 54
read getNews

helpString="Would you like to receive the RSS Feed?"
showHelp
tput cup 12 54
read getRSS

helpString="Thank you for your input"
showHelp
echo ""

 

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3 Responses to “Simple Menu for User Input”

  1. April 23, 2009 at 4:41 am, Sunny said:

    when i just copy paste your script and try to run, i encountered with below error, please suggest what is wrong… and thx for your script…
    ===============
    ERROR:
    user-input.sh: line 7: syntax error near unexpected token `newline’
    user-input.sh: line 7: `cat

    Reply

    • May 25, 2009 at 5:39 pm, LukeS said:

      there are sever problems in his, try this, its still not perfect, but it works:
      #!/bin/bash

      ## Clears the screen and builds the user input screen

      function screen() {
      clear
      cat

      Reply

  2. November 26, 2010 at 1:27 pm, Deepa Ca said:

    `newline or ;’ is not expected.
    at the end of file

    Reply

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