Shell script read multiple inputs from user

Question

How to read any number of inputs from user at once and store it into an array. For example this will read only a single input at a time

  read -p "Please enter username: " username
  echo "Dear $username,"

I want something like:

read -p "Please enter location names separated by space: "

How would i store location names into an array and then loop through it.

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered May 15 '19 at 09:45

3

try this:

#!/bin/bash
read -r -p "Please enter location names separated by space: " -a arr
for location in "${arr[@]}"; do 
   echo "$location"
done

answered May 15 '19 at 09:45

UtLox

script.sh: 2: read: Illegal option -a script.sh: 3: script.sh: Bad substitution – John Wick May 15 '19 at 10:18
@JohnWick, the code is good(ish) Bash code. `read` in Bash has had the `-a` option for a very long time, so I suspect that you are running the code with another shell, possibly Dash. If you run the code with `bash script.sh`, or make the program executable and run it with `./script.sh`, it should work unless you are using a decades-old version of Bash. You can't do what you want with Dash because it doesn't support arrays. See [Does `dash` support `bash` style arrays?](https://stackoverflow.com/q/14594033/4154375). – pjh May 15 '19 at 18:20

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 15 '19 at 09:41

1

read -p "Please enter location names separated by space: " location_names

for location in $location_names
do
echo $location
done

Testing.

Please enter location names separated by space: paris london new-york
paris
london
new-york

answered May 15 '19 at 09:41

PilouPili

Thanks, it worked. But how _location_names_ becomed an array ? – John Wick May 15 '19 at 09:46
`for` parses `location_names` with the space separator, technically location_names did not become an array – PilouPili May 15 '19 at 09:49

2 Answers2