[SOLVED] Bash prompt (while loop)

[Dr Small]

I have been trying to design a simple prompt (nothing very spectacular) that will run input as commands from variables I set in the script.

Example,

OPEN='ged $1'

while true; do
echo -n "prompt> "
read command
"$command"
done

the variable OPEN I wish to act as a command, so when I run it in my prompt, it executes the value of the variable, but so far I have not had any luck at this.

So if I run the script, it ouputs:

prompt>

And then I would type:

prompt> OPEN /path/to/file.txt

And it would execute the OPEN variable, and run my command. Any way to do this?

Dr Small

[dtmilano]

This will work with your example, but I don't see the point:


#! /bin/bash

alias OPEN='ged'

while true; do
echo -n "prompt> "
read command
eval $command
done

[Dr Small]

That does the same identical thing as before.

prompt> OPEN /path/to/file.txt
/home/drsmall/bin/prompt: line 11: OPEN: command not found

[nick_h]

By default alias expansion is only enabled for interactive shells.

To get it working, add the line

shopt -s expand_aliases
to the script dtmilano posted.

[Dr Small]

Thanks, that did the trick :)