I've written a simple bash script for running rsync in between two directories, and I wanted it to keep the terminal window open after it runs, so I can check if everything went fine.
So, I found two different solutions in this topic, that is adding either the command read or read -rn1 to the end of the script, and I'm wondering what would be the difference in between them, and if I should prefer using one over the other, since both seems to do the same.
2 Answers
read waits for a line ending with a newline, then ends. So only the enter key allows you to complete the command and, therefore in your case, to close the terminal window.
read -n1 waits for a single character, then ends. So a single press on any key terminates the command and, therefore in your case, closes the terminal window.
However, I don't see the usefulness of the -r option in your case
For more info on the bash builtin command read:
man bash(seereadin theSHELL BUILTIN COMMANDSsection)help -m read
You can run read --help to see what -rn1 does.
Running read -rn1 is the same as read -r -n1
-r do not allow backslashes to escape any characters
-n nchars return after reading NCHARS characters rather than waiting for a newline, but honor a delimiter if fewer than NCHARS characters are read before the delimiter
