Trappable Signals

Hi All,

I'm looking for a way to have a script prompt the user for some input but only wait a certain amount of time (20 secs) before assuming a default response.

The approach I'm trying is to start a background timer process that sleeps for 20 seconds then sends a signal to the parent. A trap in the parent should pick up the signal and allow me to bypass the read that's requesting input. The problem I'm having with this is that the signal my background timer is sending is always ignored until the read command has terminated. Obviously this isn't what I want.

So, does anyone know of:

1. A signal (other than -9) that will actually interrupt a "read", or
2. A better way of doing what I want?

Many thanks

Steve
(I'm on AIX 5.1 using ksh if that helps)

Try using eread from here.

Thanks for that.

eread seems to be using basically the same technique as me but instead of the ALRM, USR1 or USR2 signals that I've been using it's using INT. Simple really. I would have got there eventually.

If anyone is interested this is what I've ended up with:

This code will wait 20 seconds for a user response. If non is received then $response will be null and you can imply whatever you want from that.

Steve

I propose another solution which makes use of the noncanonical mode. I have tested it on AIX 5 2.


:
echo Press any key within 20 sec. to start input
stty -echo -icanon min 0 time 200 # 200 tenths of second
ANS=$(dd count=1 bs=100 2>/dev/null)
stty echo icanon
if [ -z "$ANS" ] ; then
echo no response, default values used
else
echo input required values
fi


Regards

Very handy. Many thanks.