restricting user input as required

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I want the user to enter only numeric values and also he should only enter
2 digits only ( eg 23 or 23 or 03 any 2 digits)

For the above purpose how should i declare my variable ?
integer value

if I read 03 in variable value then it gives me error ...also user can enter n number of digits ..how can i restrict it to only 2 digits ...

Thanks ...

2

Why not try to use the regular expressions?
It's just the thing for you.

3

i can use regular expressions to check whether entered string is numeric or character one ... but how can i restrict it to 2 or 3 digits only ?

4

From man sh

       read [-ers] [-u fd] [-t timeout] [-a aname] [-p prompt] [-n nchars] [-d
       delim] [name ...]
              -n nchars
                     read returns after reading nchars characters rather  than
                     waiting for a complete line of input.

I couldnt find anything similiar for ksh. Hmm...

Or a more generalized way would be to see what this post holds - making a .sh wait for user input

5

the express is \d{2,3}