Shell script that asks user to continue with a y/n

Question

I have a shell script that I want to ask the user if they want to continue. If they type 'n' and press enter the script will exit.

If they press 'y' and enter it will continue to run. I have this at the top of my script but it continues regardless of what I type.

What am I doing wrong ?

goon=
while [ -z $goon ]
do
    echo -n 'Do you want to continue? '
    read goon
    if [[ $goon = 'n' ]]
    then
        break
    fi
    goon=
done

Answer 1

The 'break' statement will exit you out of your while loop.

If you want to exit the script you want to use 'exit'.

Answer 2

Here's a working example (== instead of = for equality testing)

goon=
while [ -z $goon ]
do
    echo -n 'Do you want to continue? '
    read goon
    if [[ $goon == 'n' ]]
    then
        break
    fi
    goon=
done

Strange thing, the original works ok for me too ...

Answer 3

That works perfectly well for me if I get rid of the doubled square brackets:

if [ $goon = 'n' ]

Answer 4

I'm less than positive, but it looks as though your if statement will always evaluate to false. Here's a resource on BASH coding that explains how to use conditionals in the way you are attempting to. http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prog-Intro-HOWTO-6.html#ss6.4

Answer 5

I think you mean "exit" instead of "break", if you want the whole script to exit.

Also, you aren't actually checking for "y", so it loops forever even if they do say "y".

if [[ $goon = 'n' ]]
then
    exit
fi
if [[ $goon = 'y' ]]
then
    break
fi

Answer 6

Rather than echo + read, just use read -p

read -p  "Do you want to continue? " goon 

Answer 7

use an infinity loop and case/esac like this

while true
do
    read -r -p 'Do you want to continue? ' choice
    case "$choice in
      n|N) break;;
      y|Y) echo "do your stuff here"
    esac
done