What is the Linux equivalent to DOS pause

Question

I have a Bash shell script in which I would like to pause execution until the user presses a key  In DOS  this is easily accomplished with the  pause  command  Is there a Linux equivalent I can use in my script

User · Answer

If you just need to pause a loop or script, and you're happy to press Enter instead of any key, then read on its own will do the job.

do_stuff
read
do_more_stuff

It's not end-user friendly, but may be enough in cases where you're writing a quick script for yourself, and you need to pause it to do something manually in the background.

User · Answer

read -n1 is not portable  A portable way to do the same might be       trap  stty   stty -g stty -icanon   EXIT     LC ALL C dd bs 1 count 1  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1      lt  dev tty   Besides using  read  for just a press ENTER to continue prompt you could do   sed -n q  lt  dev tty

User · Answer

Try this   function pause       read -p

User · Answer

read does this   user host    read -n1 -r -p  Press any key to continue     key       user host       The -n1 specifies that it only waits for a single character  The -r puts it into raw mode  which is necessary because otherwise  if you press something like backslash  it doesn t register until you hit the next key   The -p specifies the prompt  which must be quoted if it contains spaces   The key argument is only necessary if you want to know which key they pressed  in which case you can access it through  key   If you are using Bash  you can also specify a timeout with -t  which causes read to return a failure when a key isn t pressed  So for example   read -t5 -n1 -r -p  Press any key in the next five seconds     key if        -eq  0     then     echo  A key was pressed   else     echo  No key was pressed   fi

User · Answer

read does this   user host    read -n1 -r -p  Press any key to continue     key       user host       The -n1 specifies that it only waits for a single character  The -r puts it into raw mode  which is necessary because otherwise  if you press something like backslash  it doesn t register until you hit the next key   The -p specifies the prompt  which must be quoted if it contains spaces   The key argument is only necessary if you want to know which key they pressed  in which case you can access it through  key   If you are using Bash  you can also specify a timeout with -t  which causes read to return a failure when a key isn t pressed  So for example   read -t5 -n1 -r -p  Press any key in the next five seconds     key if        -eq  0     then     echo  A key was pressed   else     echo  No key was pressed   fi

User · Answer

I use these ways a lot that are very short  and they are like  theunamedguy and  Jim solutions  but with timeout and silent mode in addition      I especially love the last case and use it in a lot of scripts that run in a loop until the user presses Enter   Commands   Enter solution  read -rsp   Press enter to continue    n   Escape solution  with -d    e    read -rsp   Press escape to continue    n  -d    e   Any key solution  with -n 1   read -rsp   Press any key to continue    n  -n 1 key   echo  key  Question with preselected choice  with -ei   Y    read -rp   Are you sure  Y n      -ei   Y  key    echo  key  Timeout solution  with -t 5   read -rsp   Press any key or wait 5 seconds to continue    n  -n 1 -t 5   Sleep enhanced alias  read -rst 0 5  timeout      echo  timeout    Explanation  -r specifies raw mode  which don t allow combined characters like     or       -s specifies silent mode  and because we don t need keyboard output   -p   prompt  specifies the prompt  which need to be between    and   to let spaces and escaped characters  Be careful  you must put between single quotes with dollars symbol to benefit escaped characters  otherwise you can use simple quotes   -d    e  specifies escappe as delimiter charater  so as a final character for current entry  this is possible to put any character but be careful to put a character that the user can type   -n 1 specifies that it only needs a single character   -e specifies readline mode   -i   Y  specifies Y as initial text in readline mode   -t 5 specifies a timeout of 5 seconds  key serve in case you need to know the input  in -n1 case  the key that has been pressed      serve to know the exit code of the last program  for read  142 in case of timeout  0 correct input  Put    in a variable as soon as possible if you need to test it after somes commands  because all commands would rewrite

User · Answer

Yes to using read - and there are a couple of tweaks that make it most useful in both cron and in the terminal    Example   time rsync  options  read -n 120 -p  Press  Enter  to continue       echo       The -n 120 makes the read statement time out after 2 minutes so it does not block in cron     In terminal it gives 2 minutes to see how long the rsync command took to execute   Then the subsequent echo is so the subsequent bash prompt will appear on the next line   Otherwise it will show on the same line directly after  continue     when Enter is pressed in terminal

User · Answer

I use these ways a lot that are very short  and they are like  theunamedguy and  Jim solutions  but with timeout and silent mode in addition      I especially love the last case and use it in a lot of scripts that run in a loop until the user presses Enter   Commands   Enter solution  read -rsp   Press enter to continue    n   Escape solution  with -d    e    read -rsp   Press escape to continue    n  -d    e   Any key solution  with -n 1   read -rsp   Press any key to continue    n  -n 1 key   echo  key  Question with preselected choice  with -ei   Y    read -rp   Are you sure  Y n      -ei   Y  key    echo  key  Timeout solution  with -t 5   read -rsp   Press any key or wait 5 seconds to continue    n  -n 1 -t 5   Sleep enhanced alias  read -rst 0 5  timeout      echo  timeout    Explanation  -r specifies raw mode  which don t allow combined characters like     or       -s specifies silent mode  and because we don t need keyboard output   -p   prompt  specifies the prompt  which need to be between    and   to let spaces and escaped characters  Be careful  you must put between single quotes with dollars symbol to benefit escaped characters  otherwise you can use simple quotes   -d    e  specifies escappe as delimiter charater  so as a final character for current entry  this is possible to put any character but be careful to put a character that the user can type   -n 1 specifies that it only needs a single character   -e specifies readline mode   -i   Y  specifies Y as initial text in readline mode   -t 5 specifies a timeout of 5 seconds  key serve in case you need to know the input  in -n1 case  the key that has been pressed      serve to know the exit code of the last program  for read  142 in case of timeout  0 correct input  Put    in a variable as soon as possible if you need to test it after somes commands  because all commands would rewrite

User · Answer

read does this   user host    read -n1 -r -p  Press any key to continue     key       user host       The -n1 specifies that it only waits for a single character  The -r puts it into raw mode  which is necessary because otherwise  if you press something like backslash  it doesn t register until you hit the next key   The -p specifies the prompt  which must be quoted if it contains spaces   The key argument is only necessary if you want to know which key they pressed  in which case you can access it through  key   If you are using Bash  you can also specify a timeout with -t  which causes read to return a failure when a key isn t pressed  So for example   read -t5 -n1 -r -p  Press any key in the next five seconds     key if        -eq  0     then     echo  A key was pressed   else     echo  No key was pressed   fi

User · Answer

read without any parameters will only continue if you press enter  The DOS pause command will continue if you press any key  Use read    n1 if you want this behaviour

User · Answer

If you just need to pause a loop or script, and you're happy to press Enter instead of any key, then read on its own will do the job.

do_stuff
read
do_more_stuff

It's not end-user friendly, but may be enough in cases where you're writing a quick script for yourself, and you need to pause it to do something manually in the background.

User · Answer

This worked for me on multiple flavors of Linux  where some of these other solutions did not  including the most popular ones here   I think it s more readable too     echo Press enter to continue  read dummy    Note that a variable needs to be supplied as an argument to read

User · Answer

This function works in both bash and zsh  and ensures I O to the terminal     Prompt for a keypress to continue  Customise prompt with    function pause      gt  dev tty printf   s       -Press any key to continue             ZSH VERSION     amp  amp  read -krs    Use -u0 to read from STDIN       BASH VERSION     amp  amp   lt  dev tty read -rsn1   printf   n    export function pause   Put it in your   ba z shrc for Great Justice

User · Answer

This worked for me on multiple flavors of Linux  where some of these other solutions did not  including the most popular ones here   I think it s more readable too     echo Press enter to continue  read dummy    Note that a variable needs to be supplied as an argument to read

User · Answer

Try this   function pause       read -p

User · Answer

read without any parameters will only continue if you press enter  The DOS pause command will continue if you press any key  Use read    n1 if you want this behaviour

User · Answer

Yes to using read - and there are a couple of tweaks that make it most useful in both cron and in the terminal    Example   time rsync  options  read -n 120 -p  Press  Enter  to continue       echo       The -n 120 makes the read statement time out after 2 minutes so it does not block in cron     In terminal it gives 2 minutes to see how long the rsync command took to execute   Then the subsequent echo is so the subsequent bash prompt will appear on the next line   Otherwise it will show on the same line directly after  continue     when Enter is pressed in terminal

User · Answer

read does this   user host    read -n1 -r -p  Press any key to continue     key       user host       The -n1 specifies that it only waits for a single character  The -r puts it into raw mode  which is necessary because otherwise  if you press something like backslash  it doesn t register until you hit the next key   The -p specifies the prompt  which must be quoted if it contains spaces   The key argument is only necessary if you want to know which key they pressed  in which case you can access it through  key   If you are using Bash  you can also specify a timeout with -t  which causes read to return a failure when a key isn t pressed  So for example   read -t5 -n1 -r -p  Press any key in the next five seconds     key if        -eq  0     then     echo  A key was pressed   else     echo  No key was pressed   fi

User · Answer

Try this   function pause       read -p

User · Answer

read without any parameters will only continue if you press enter  The DOS pause command will continue if you press any key  Use read    n1 if you want this behaviour

User · Answer

read without any parameters will only continue if you press enter  The DOS pause command will continue if you press any key  Use read    n1 if you want this behaviour

User · Answer

read -n1 is not portable  A portable way to do the same might be       trap  stty   stty -g stty -icanon   EXIT     LC ALL C dd bs 1 count 1  gt  dev null 2 gt  amp 1      lt  dev tty   Besides using  read  for just a press ENTER to continue prompt you could do   sed -n q  lt  dev tty

User · Answer

This function works in both bash and zsh  and ensures I O to the terminal     Prompt for a keypress to continue  Customise prompt with    function pause      gt  dev tty printf   s       -Press any key to continue             ZSH VERSION     amp  amp  read -krs    Use -u0 to read from STDIN       BASH VERSION     amp  amp   lt  dev tty read -rsn1   printf   n    export function pause   Put it in your   ba z shrc for Great Justice

User · Answer

Try this   function pause       read -p

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