backspace does not remove tput command's underline in bash

Question

i'm trying to practice to do a nice and neat interface. However, i'm stuck at this problem. I'm trying to underline the input of the user which i managed to do it using this method

echo -n "Title : "; read -p "$(tput smul)" getTitle; tput rmul

tput smul is used to underline the word while tput rmul is used to remove the underline after this statement is successful.

Unfortunately, when i accidentally typed wrongly and decided to back space, the underline did not disappear accordingly.

Instead, the underline remains there even though i removed all the user input.

Is there any solution for this?

hek2mgl · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-30T16:11:03.697

2

Use readline via the -e flag:

echo -n "Title : "; read -ep "$(tput smul)" getTitle; tput rmul

edited Jan 30 '17 at 16:11

answered Jan 30 '17 at 16:09

hek2mgl

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thanks! it works but may i ask what does the `-e` flag do? – Bryan Jan 30 '17 at 16:10
It tells `read` to use the `readline` library to read the line. Check the Wikipedia article I've linked. – hek2mgl Jan 30 '17 at 16:11

backspace does not remove tput command's underline in bash

1 Answers1