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read(1)								       read(1)

NAME
       read - Reads a line from standard input

SYNOPSIS
       read [-r] var...

STANDARDS
       Interfaces  documented on this reference page conform to industry stan‐
       dards as follows:

       read:  XCU5.0

       Refer to the standards(5) reference page	 for  more  information	 about
       industry standards and associated tags.

OPTIONS
       Do  not	treat  a backslash character in any special way. Consider each
       backslash to be part of the input line.

					    Note

	      The -r option is included to enable read to subsume the  purpose
	      of the obsolete line utility.

OPERANDS
       The name of an existing or non-existing shell variable.

DESCRIPTION
       The read utility reads a single line from standard input.

       By default, unless the -r option is specified, backslash (\) acts as an
       escape character.  If standard input  is	 a  terminal  device  and  the
       invoking	 shell is interactive, read prompts for a continuation line in
       the following cases: The shell reads an input line ending with a	 back‐
       slash,  unless the -r option is specified.  A here-document is not ter‐
       minated after a newline character is entered.

       The line is split into fields as in the shell (see the sh(1)  reference
       page);  the first field is assigned to the first variable var, the sec‐
       ond field to the second variable var, and so forth.  If there are fewer
       var parameters specified than there are fields, the leftover fields and
       their intervening separators are assigned to the last  var.   If	 there
       are  fewer  fields  than	 vars,	the  remaining	vars  are set to empty
       strings.

       The setting of variables specified by the var  parameters  affects  the
       current	shell  execution environment.  If read is called in a subshell
       or separate utility execution environment, such as one of  the  follow‐
       ing,  it	 does  not affect the shell variables in the caller's environ‐
       ment:

       (read foo) nohup read ...  find . -exec read ... \;

NOTES
       The -r option is included to enable read to subsume the purpose of  the
       obsolete line utility.

RESTRICTIONS
       The  results  are  undefined  if an end-of-file is detected following a
       backslash at the end of a line when -r is not specified.

EXIT STATUS
       The following exit values are returned: Successful completion.  End-of-
       file was detected or an error occurred.

EXAMPLES
       The  following  command prints a file with the first field of each line
       moved to the end of the line:

       while read -r xx yy do
	    printf "%s %s\n" "$yy" "$xx" done < input_file

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
       The following environment  variables  affect  the  execution  of	 read:
       Determines  the internal field separators used to delimit fields.  Pro‐
       vides a default value for the internationalization variables  that  are
       unset  or null.	If LANG is unset or null, the corresponding value from
       the default locale is used.  If any of the  internationalization	 vari‐
       ables contain an invalid setting, the utility behaves as if none of the
       variables had been defined.  If set to a non-empty string value,	 over‐
       rides  the  values  of  all  the	 other internationalization variables.
       Determines the locale for the interpretation of sequences of  bytes  of
       text  data as characters (for example, single-byte as opposed to multi‐
       byte characters in arguments).  Determines the locale  used  to	affect
       the  format  and	 contents  of  diagnostic messages written to standard
       error.  Determines the location of message catalogues for the  process‐
       ing  of	LC_MESSAGES.   Provides	 the prompt string that an interactive
       shell will write to standard error when a line ending with a  backslash
       is  read	 and the -r option was not specified, or if a here-document is
       not terminated after a newline character is entered.

SEE ALSO
       Commands:  line(1)

       Functions:  fread(3)

       Standards:  standards(5)

								       read(1)
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