Respond to Prompt in Bash Script
I work on a project that requires I frequently build and destroy a virtual machine. I don't enjoy having to do so but virtual machines can be notoriously difficult to prop up, especially when you have a complex app living within it.
Manually typing the same commands over and over can be mind-numbing so I've create a bash script to handle all of the work for me. One hiccup to the process is needing to confirm removal of an existing virtual machine; using a pipe and echo allows me to answer the prompt:
# ... some directives here
# Remove the machine, confirming "y" when asked by docker-machine
echo 'y' | docker-machine rm default
# ... more directives here
Using echo I pipe a y response to docker-machine's confirmation prompt, thus allowing the script to move forward with other tasks without the need for manual intervention.
I don't, however, know how to handle multiple prompts -- can you tell me and everyone else?
![I’m an Impostor]()
This is the hardest thing I've ever had to write, much less admit to myself. I've written resignation letters from jobs I've loved, I've ended relationships, I've failed at a host of tasks, and let myself down in my life. All of those feelings were very...
![Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools]()
MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does. Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up. I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own. In any event...
![Using jQuery and MooTools Together]()
There's yet another reason to master more than one JavaScript library: you can use some of them together! Since MooTools is prototype-based and jQuery is not, jQuery and MooTools may be used together on the same page.
The XHTML and JavaScript
jQuery is namespaced so the...
![Dynamically Create Charts Using MooTools MilkChart and Google Analytics]()
The prospect of creating graphics charts with JavaScript is exciting. It's also the perfect use of JavaScript -- creating non-essential features with unobtrusive scripting. I've created a mix of PHP (the Analytics class), HTML, and MooTools JavaScript that will connect to Google Analytics...
As far as I know this is usually done with the yes command:
This should also respond to multiple prompts.
Ah yes, I did experiment with that. But what if I know the multiple prompt responses should be “y”, “n”, “3”? That would be useful.
To expand on what Andreas said, you can build a canned file of responses, one per line (extra blanks for the equivalent of hitting enter) and sending that to your program:
Can’t you stream a file in? Like in
Try a here string.
while IFS= read -r; do echo "E- $REPLY" done <<<"y n 3"Will print the three lines of responses. Assuming the docker prompt is similar to read it should work.
The ‘expect’ utility can be installed on most Linux boxes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expect
I agree about ‘expect’ as Rohit mentions, it’s usually what you resort to when piping doesn’t work for different reasons (such as passwords being read from physical terminal only, input being prematurely consumed by a loop, etc).
The tool is {advanced|complicated} enough to maybe warrant a future post ;-)
In my team we use Vagrant and Ansible to do these kinds of things. They are very helpful tool for popping up a dev env with customized apps / configs.
I have not tried Ansible for Docker but there is a page for it https://www.ansible.com/docker