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Input Validation

•

Join Date: Oct 2008

Posts: 23

Reputation: Roybut is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 0

Roybut

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Newbie Poster

Input Validation

Aug 8th, 2009

Hi,

I need to validate user input to ensure it is alphabet characters only. I know there must be a simple solution but evertything I have tried has either partially failed or totally failed.

At the moment, I have this:

Help with Code Tags

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until [ $(echo "$myVar" | grep -v '[^a-zA-Z]') ]
                do
                        read -p "Enter some text" myVar
                done

and it works but allows at least spaces (possibly other unwanted characters, too) and I can't use that. I know very little of grep so if some kind person will point out where I'm going wrong, I'll be most grateful.

Thanks.

Last edited by Roybut; Aug 8th, 2009 at 12:03 pm.

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Join Date: Jul 2009

Posts: 54

Reputation: ryuslash is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 10

ryuslash

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Junior Poster in Training

Re: Input Validation

Aug 9th, 2009

try

 Help with Code Tags 
 bash Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
until [ $(echo "$myVar" | grep -e '^[a-zA-Z]*$') ]
  do
    read - p "Enter some text" myVar
  done
until [ $(echo "$myVar" | grep -e '^[a-zA-Z]*$') ]
  do
    read - p "Enter some text" myVar
  done

•

Join Date: Oct 2008

Posts: 23

Reputation: Roybut is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 0

Roybut

Offline

Newbie Poster

Re: Input Validation

Aug 10th, 2009

•

Originally Posted by ryuslash

try
Help with Code Tags

bash Syntax (Toggle Plain Text)
until [ $(echo "$myVar" | grep -e '^[a-zA-Z]*$') ]
  do
    read - p "Enter some text" myVar
  done
until [ $(echo "$myVar" | grep -e '^[a-zA-Z]*$') ] do read - p "Enter some text" myVar done