Reading Variable Values from Stdin: read

The read command reads a line of text from stdin and assigns it to the specified variable. For example, read A reads a line of text and assigns it to the variable A.

The read command can also send a prompt to stdout using the -p option:

$ read -p "Enter your name: " NAME
Enter your name: Chris
$ echo $NAME
Chris

Here is a script which uses a couple of read statements:

#!/usr/bin/bash
read -p "Please enter your name: " NAME
echo "Pleased to meet you, $NAME"
read -p "Please enter a filename: " FILE
echo "Saving your name into the file..."
echo "NAME=$NAME" >>$FILE
echo "Done."