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Simple menus in Bash scripts with select

Welcome to the next pikoTutorial!

The select keyword in shell scripting provides an easy way to present a list of options to the user and handle their selection. It is particularly useful when you have a predefined set of choices and want the user to pick one.

Bash
#!/bin/bash
# Define menu options
options=("Option 1" "Option 2" "Option 3" "Quit")
# Prompt user with menu
PS3="Select an option: "
# Display menu using select loop
select choice in "${options[@]}"
do
    case $choice in
        "Option 1")
            echo "You chose Option 1"
            ;;
        "Option 2")
            echo "You chose Option 2"
            ;;
        "Option 3")
            echo "You chose Option 3"
            ;;
        "Quit")
            echo "Exiting..."
            break
            ;;
        *)
            echo "Invalid option! Please select a valid number."
            ;;
    esac
done

When you run that script, you can see that all the options and prompt have been automatically printed out and you can select them in a loop:

1) Option 1
2) Option 2
3) Option 3
4) Quit
Select an option: 3
You chose Option 3
Select an option: 1
You chose Option 1
Select an option: 4
Exiting...

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