I am learning some bash scripting.

I am interested to learn about getting input for my scripts via a GUI interface. It seems that yad (forked from zenity) is the most robust tool for this. (But if there is a better choice I would like to hear about it too.)

Is it possible to obtain 2 or more named variables using yad? Not just getting the values based on their positions ($1, $2, etc), with awk. See “What doesn’t work” spoiler for those.

What doesn't work

I find how to obtain one named variable, for example:

inputStr=$(zenity --entry --title="My Title" --text="My Text:")

I also find solutions relying on opening single-variable dialogues sequentially but that’s a terrible interface.

Everything else relies on chopping up the output with awk or based on the positions, $1, $2, $3 etc. In this script $jpgfile is obtained:

jpgfile=$(echo $OUTPUT | awk 'BEGIN {FS="," } { print $1 }')

This seems unmanageable because adding a new field or failing to provide input for a field will both change the output order of every subsequent value. It’s way too fragile.

For a simple example, I want to ask the user for a file name and some content. Creating the dialogue is like this:

yad --title "Create a file" --form --field="File name" --field="Content"

If you fill both fields the output in the terminal is file|this is some text|. How do I get them into variables like $filename and $filecontent? So then I can finish the script like this:

touch "$filename"
echo "$filecontent" > $filename

Is this possible??? I do not find it anywhere. I looked though all kinds of websites like YAD Guide, yad man page, smokey01. Maybe I missed something. On yaddemo I read about bash arrays and it seemed to come close but I couldn’t quite piece it together.

  • Flyswat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 months ago

    If you fill both fields the output in the terminal is file|this is some text|

    Wouldn’t it be easy to get them using awk by defining | as a field separator?

    • linuxPIPEpower@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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      10 months ago

      It is the only solution I found. I described it in the post but put it behind a “spoiler” “What doesn’t work” to make the post shorter.

      This seems unmanageable because adding a new field or failing to provide input for a field will both change the output order of every subsequent value. It’s way too fragile.