detect tab from builtin bash read

[Sinbad s]

How to read tab from bash builtin read, The following doesn't seem to work.

mytab=`echo -e "\t"`

while IFS= read -e -i "$cmd" -p $prompt char
do
if [[ "$char" == "$mytab" ]]; then
echo "got tab"
fi
done

[Ed Morton]

Try =~ instead of ==. See
http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/ccmd/conditional_expression#regular_expression_matching

Ed.

[Teemu Likonen]

Sinbad s. [2017-08-17 02:53:41-07] wrote:

> How to read tab from bash builtin read,

while read -r -N 1 char; do
if [[ $char == $'\t' ]]; then
echo "That's the TAB key!"
fi
done

--
/// Teemu Likonen - .-.. <https://keybase.io/tlikonen> //
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[Barry Margolin]

In article <4600785e-5390-4ffc...@googlegroups.com>,

The -e option means to use readline to allow input editing. Readline
normally uses the TAB key for completion, I don't think it will be put
into the variable.

And even if it is, $char contains the entire input line (which will
include any parts of $cmd that weren't edited away), not just a single
character. If you want to test if there's a TAB anywhere in the input,
you need a wildcard or regexp pattern.

BTW, you don't need that echo thing to get a tab into a variable, you
can simply do:

mytab=$'\t'

--
Barry Margolin, bar...@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***