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isaacs committed Dec 6, 2011
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For reading user input from stdin.

Like `read(1)` for node. (NB: very different from `read(2)`!)

read [-ers] [-u fd] [-t timeout] [-a aname] [-p prompt] [-n nchars] [-d delim]
[name ...]
One line is read from the standard input, or from the file descriptor fd
supplied as an argument to the -u option, and the first word is assigned to
the first name, the second word to the second name, and so on, with left-
over words and their intervening separators assigned to the last name. If
there are fewer words read from the input stream than names, the remaining
names are assigned empty values. The characters in IFS are used to split
the line into words. The backslash character (\) may be used to remove any
special meaning for the next character read and for line continuation.
Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:
-a aname
The words are assigned to sequential indices of the array variable
aname, starting at 0. aname is unset before any new values are
assigned. Other name arguments are ignored.
-d delim
The first character of delim is used to terminate the input line,
rather than newline.
-e If the standard input is coming from a terminal, readline (see READ-
LINE above) is used to obtain the line.
-n nchars
read returns after reading nchars characters rather than waiting for
a complete line of input.
-p prompt
Display prompt on standard error, without a trailing newline, before
attempting to read any input. The prompt is displayed only if input
is coming from a terminal.
-r Backslash does not act as an escape character. The backslash is
considered to be part of the line. In particular, a backslash-new-
line pair may not be used as a line continuation.
-s Silent mode. If input is coming from a terminal, characters are not
echoed.
-t timeout
Cause read to time out and return failure if a complete line of
input is not read within timeout seconds. This option has no effect
if read is not reading input from the terminal or a pipe.
-u fd Read input from file descriptor fd.

If no names are supplied, the line read is assigned to the variable REPLY.
The return code is zero, unless end-of-file is encountered, read times out,
or an invalid file descriptor is supplied as the argument to -u.

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