read command not working in ksh script

[Sujoy Choudhury]

I am trying to read from user input in a certain condition.
The script doesn't wait for user input at all.

readDB(){
if [[ $COMMAND -eq 0 ]]; then 
            # read the Name from User
            echo "Please enter Name:"
            read NAME
            echo "Name read from user:"$NAME
fi
# Call the ksh file 
./callOtherScript.ksh $NAME
}

The script prints
Please enter Name:
Name read from user:

I tried with many combination of "read" command like read -rn 0 NAME. Still not working.

[Sujoy Choudhury]

Is this ksh issue?
Cause the same command read works in the console.
Is that when I try to run the same command inside from a ksh script it doesn't work at all.

[Peter Johnson]

Exactly how are you running that script? Are you starting it from a command prompt, and if so, how are you starting it? There are various ways of starting a script where a different stdin that what you might expect is supplied, which could account for this behavior.

[Sujoy Choudhury]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply.

My script is like this:

getName(){
   if [ $1 == 'y' ]; then
       print -n "Enter Name:"
       read NAME
       echo "Name is "$NAME
   fi
}

# process arguments
if [ $# -eg 0]; then
   echo "no params given..."
elif [ $# -eg 1 ]; then
   getName $1
elif [ $# -gt 1 ]; then
   echo "too many params..."
fi

I am calling the script in this way ...

$> ./runIt.ksh y

Now this doesn't wait to take the user input.

[Peter Johnson]

Are you running the command from ksh or from bash?

[Sujoy Choudhury]

I am running it from bash.

[Peter Johnson]

Try running it from ksh. I think that when running it from bash, you end up with a new session with a different stdin, which is why you are not being prompted.

[Sujoy Choudhury]

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply.
I keep on waiting for your reply.

Well, I just tried running from ksh shell too. I got the same issue.
This is what I did, I typed `which $SHELL` that returned me /bin/sh which means it's bash.
On my old shell I typed "ksh".
And then tried to execute the same script.


Now the point is, even if I typed ksh and the shell changed, but when I tried to run `which $SHELL` that returned me the same /bin/sh.
Do I have to set some path or something to point to ksh shell.

Thanks for your help. Much appreciated.

[Sujoy Choudhury]

One of my colleague figured this out for me.

There was a while loop in a different function which was like this:

`grep ... ` | while read word; do

# calling the function where I was using read command...


done

So just by changing the while to for loop that issue got resolved...