Script 'Enter' Command. Newbie.

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I have the following script which calls a program that asks for user input before progressing. I am new to scripting and this script was written by the previous admin. After $MERGE is executed the application associated with it needs user input - asks for 'Enter' to be pressed. At the moment the output is being redirected to /dev/null. I need to know how to script this. I have seen in other threads that you place a \r (carriage return) into the script. I don't know exactly how to do this though. Thanks for your help.

MERGE="/opt/application/application

$MERGE @list merged.pdf > /dev/null 2>&1

if \(\( $? != 0 \)\)
then
  print "Merging files $patid_prev failed." >> $LOGFILE
else
  patno=\`echo $patid_prev | awk '\{printf\("%06d",$1\)\}'\`
  mv merged.pdf "$STARCH_DIR/$\{studyno\}-$\{patno\}.pdf"
fi

$MERGE > /dev/null 2>&1
if (( $? != 0 ))
then
print "PDF-Meld is not installed or not accessible." >> $LOGFILE
print "" >> $LOGFILE
print "Program aborted." >> $LOGFILE
rm -rf $WORKDIR
exit 1
fi

2

If the app takes "yes" or enter you could check if you can use "/usr/bin/yes". Example:

doThis() { echo "Delete this continent?"; read ans; echo $ans; }
]$ yes | doThis

If it doesn't work then 'echo "\n"' is a newline, also see 'man echo'.

3

Thanks for your reply unSpawn. I will try that.