Learning Linux Shell Scripting

Implementing simple menus with select

With the Bash shell, it is possible to create simple menus with the help of the select built-in command.

The syntax of select is as follows:

            PS3=prompting-text
            select VARIABLE in item1 item2 item3
            do
              commands
            done

The advantage of a menu with select is that we can have an endless loop with it. We can have a condition in which we exit the loop.

In the following script select_01.sh, we show the menu with five options such as a, bc, def, ghi, and jkl. The script will execute the command inside do and done:

#!/bin/bash
select var1 in a  bc   def    ghi   jkl
do
echo "Present value of var1 is $var1
done

Let's test the program:

$ chmod +x select_01.sh
$ ./select_01.sh

The following will be the output after executing the preceding ...