How do I prompt a user for confirmation in bash script?

Question

I want to put a quick "are you sure?" prompt for confirmation at the top of a potentially dangerous bash script, what's the easiest/best way to do this?

Answer 1

qnd: use

read VARNAME
echo $VARNAME

for a one line response without readline support. Then test $VARNAME however you want.

Answer 2

Please see How do I prompt for input in a Linux shell script?

Answer 3

read -p "Are you sure? " -n 1
if [[ $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
then
    # do dangerous stuff
fi

Edit:

I incorporated levislevis85's suggestion (thanks!) and added the -n option to read to accept one character without the need to press Enter. You can use one or both of these.

Also, the negated form might look like this:

read -p "Are you sure? " -n 1
if [[ ! $REPLY =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]
then
    exit 1
fi

Answer 4

echo are you sure?
read x
if [ "$x" = "yes" ]
then
  # do the dangerous stuff
fi

Answer 5

Try the read shell builtin:

read -p "Continue (y/n)?" CONT
if [ "$CONT" == "y" ]; then
  echo "yaaa";
else
  echo "booo";
fi

Answer 6

#!/bin/bash
echo Please, enter your name
read NAME
echo "Hi $NAME!"
if [ "x$NAME" = "xyes" ] ; then
 # do something
fi

I s a short script to read in bash and echo back results.

Answer 7

This what I found elsewhere, is there a better possible version?

read -p "Are you sure you wish to continue?"
if [ "$REPLY" != "yes" ]; then
   exit
fi

Answer 8

use case/esac.

read -p "Continue (y/n)?" choice
case "$choice" in 
  y|Y ) echo "yes";;
  n|N ) echo "no";;
  * ) echo "invalid";;
esac

advantage:

1) neater,
2) can use "OR" condition easier
3) can use character range, eg [yY][Es][Ss]