Re: Bash/readline enhancement: wish to pre-set initial value of input text

[Jan Schampera]

Richard Neill wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> When using read, it would be really neat to be able to pre-fill the form
> with a default (or previous) value.
> 
> For example, a script which wants you to enter your name, and thinks
> that my name is Richard, but that I might want to correct it.
> Alternatively, this would be useful within a loop, to allow correction
> of previously-entered text, without fully typing it again.

A bit of the functionality (in some way) is already there. You can
preload the commandline history and use read -e:

--snipsnap--
If -e is supplied and the shell is interactive, readline is used to
obtain the line.
--snipsnap--

A bit of hard work, though.

J.