Cfrtjryk

I am attempting my first bash script. I would like to prompt the user to find out where they would like a cloned repo to be saved.

Currently I am assigning it like this.

warpToLocation="${HOME}/apps/"

Is there some way to do it like this:

read -e -p "Enter the path to the file: " -i "${HOME}/apps/" FILEPATH

but save the result as warpToLocation?

EDIT:

#!/bin/bash



echo "where would you like to install your repos?"



read -p "Enter the path to the file: " temp

warpToLocation="${HOME}/$temp/"



warpInLocations=("git@github.com:cca/toolkit.git" "git@github.com:cca/sms.git" "git@github.com:cca/boogle.git" "git@github.com:cca/cairo.git")







echo "warping in toolkit, sms, boogle and cairo"

for repo in "${warpInLocations[@]}"

do

  warpInDir=$repo

  warpInDir=${warpInDir#*/}

  warpInDir=${warpInDir%.*}

  if [ -d "$warpToLocation"]; then

    echo "somethings in the way.. $warpInDir all ready exists"

  else

    git clone $repo $warpInDir

fi



done

What I had done to get that error was add the code you gave me.

The issue with that is that -e (which allows you to edit the input with arrows) and -i (a preview/optional answer) runs on bash version 4 and higher and I am running version GNU bash, version 3.2.48(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin12).

What's wrong with

read -e -p "Enter the path to the file: " -i "${HOME}/apps/" warpToLocation

?

It is seldom constructive to ask the user interactively for a pathname. That limits the scripts usability to interactive use and it forces the user to type in (correctly) a possibly long pathname, without being able to use variable names like $HOME or $project_dir (or whatever variables the user likes to use) and without using ~.

Instead, take the pathname to the destination directory from the command line, validate that it's a directory, and clone the Git repositories into it if the they do not already exist.

#!/bin/sh



destdir=$1



if [ ! -d "$destdir" ]; then

    printf 'No such directory: %sn' "$destdir" >&2

    exit 1

fi



for repo in toolkit sms boggle cairo

do

    if [ -e "$destdir/$repo" ]; then

        printf 'Name %s already exists for repository %s (skipping)n' 

            "$destdir/$repo" "$repo" >&2

        continue

    fi



    printf 'Cloning %sn' "$repo"

    git clone "git@github.com:cca/$repo.git" "$destdir/$repo"

done

This script would be used as

./script.sh "$HOME/projects/stuff"

and could be run without user interaction from e.g. Ansible or Cron.