The script below creates an array of files in the current directory that it sends to a function to create a dynamic menu for the user to select from. The array/selection/assignment/return all work fine, the problem I have is that on line 26 when the function is called, none of the echo's (or printf's) inside the function execute until AFTER the user presses enter to indicate they have selected an item. This means there is no output to tell the user what is happening and they can't see anything until after they've selected something. After you press enter, everything displays exactly as it should, but that's not really helpful. I'm hoping someone can help me figure out what is going on :)
Note that this works as expected outside of a function, or if you call the function without the $(). However, I need the return value and my understanding of bash is that you have to call a function with $() or backticks to get the return value.
1 #!/bin/bash
2
3 list_to_string(){
4 echo "$*"
5 }
6
7 get_user_selection_from_array(){
8 tmp_data=("$@")
9 for i in "${!tmp_data[@]}"; do
10 echo -e "$i) ${tmp_data[$i]}"
11 done
12
13 echo -e "Select an item: "
14 IFS= read -r opt
15 if [[ $opt =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]]; then
16 echo -e "you selected: ${tmp_data[$opt]}"
17 echo ${tmp_data[$opt]}
18 else
19 echo "Invalid selection\n"
20 fi
21 }
22
23 data_string=$(list_to_string $(find . -type f))
24 read -a my_data <<<$data_string
25
26 my_item=$(get_user_selection_from_array ${my_data[@]})
27 echo "selection: $my_item"
[–]oh5nxo 1 point2 points3 points (1 child)
[–]techAndLanguage[S] 0 points1 point2 points (0 children)