read interactive prompt in a bash script

Question

I'm trying to automate some mundane stuff I have to do with bash, but I'm running into trouble with debugging. Basically when I run interactively the script runs fine, but when I submit the job to a batch system whatever I'm running prints

Please answer yes or no.

multiple times. The problem is that I have no idea what it's asking me. Is there some way to direct the prompt to be printed so I can debug this?

Have you tried [`bash -x`](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10107124/bash-x-command)? Basically, `bash -x -c your-script.sh`. — Boldewyn, May 09 '14 at 12:47
hmm, that's theoretically useful, but the problem is that bash is executed by the batch system. Is there some way to turn that option on once I'm in a script? — Shep, May 09 '14 at 12:50
hmm, so it seems there is: http://stackoverflow.com/a/951352/915501 — Shep, May 09 '14 at 12:52
still doesn't really help, this just tells me that the method calls a python script. I'd imagine that python somehow prints a prompt, but I can't seem to view it. — Shep, May 09 '14 at 13:28
Doesn't the batch system give you a capture of stdout when it runs your job? How about result files? you could redirect stdout to a file in the script with `exec >file` — Jacobo de Vera, May 09 '14 at 14:45
Workaround: try to execute as `/bin/bash -i myscript.sh` and/ or to put `#!/bin/bash -i` as 1st row... you can try to cheat it ;) — Hastur, May 29 '14 at 16:19

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 10 '14 at 11:10

I think your script is in sort of need for a TTY, my workaround is this one:

have_tty()
{
    tty >/dev/null 2>&1
    return $?
}

say()
{
    if have_tty; then echo $@; return; fi
    logger -i -t restart_libertas $@
}

Just replace

echo

with

say

and I think you're done

read interactive prompt in a bash script

1 Answers1