Validating user input in bash.

[Nick_the_Greek]

Hi community

I am doing some experimentations in bash script. Learning from various sites. The last time that I do programming was since Locomotive Basic.(Remember Amstard 6128 ?)

I can find out a better way to validate user's inputs with read command.(please see below). I am trying to accept only those inputs from users that are meet some criteria.

Like:
read WEP keys --> accept only (5 or 13 ascii) or (10 or 26 hex)

I found a way and a really don't think is the correct one because it is "command specific". With that I mean that I use the errors from a specific command (in my case iwconfig) to see if that input (key xxxx..) that I get from the user, fits to the command.

 #!/bin/bash

clear
echo -n "WEP Key: ?"

while read key; do
     if [ -z "${key}" ]; then
        clear  
	echo "That was empty, do it again!"
	echo -n "WEP Key: ?"
     else
          echo "Checking now..."
          break
     fi
done

iwconfig wlan0 key $key >/dev/null 2>&1

if [ $? != 0 ]; then
	echo "Your key is `echo ${#key}` characters long"
	echo "It should be : a) 10 or 26 ASCII characters long"
	echo "          or : b) 5 or 13 HEX characters long" 
else
	echo "Valid key"
fi

I don't want to use the above, since with that I must have a wireless interface up. And if I got one then that he will use that key before I wanted to. After all there are cases that there aren't commands to validate user's inputs.

Can you suggest me a better way to validate user inputs?

Thank you in advanced.

Nick

[Gitsnik]

read WEP keys --> accept only (10 or 26 ascii) or (5 or 13 hex)

As always, most of this is untested (or deliberately flawed) to make sure you have to figure it out for youself

read WEPKEY
WEPKEY=`echo $WEPKEY | cut -c 1-26`
HEXSTRIPPED=`echo $WEPKEY | sed 's/[^0-9A-F]//g'`
if [ $HEXSTRIPPED -ne $WEPKEY ];
then
    # key is ASCII
    SHORTASCII=`echo $WEPKEY | cut -c 1-10`
    # now we have $SHORTASCII and $WEPKEY, we need to check the length
    # of SHORTASCII and compare it to the length of WEPKEY. If SHORT is equal
    # to 10, and wepkey is not equal to 26, then we use short, else wepkey
    # unless neither are the right size, then we bail out.
    # bonus side effect: we fail through to a 10char ascii key, rather than a
    # 15 character ascii key
    SHORTLEN=`expr length $SHORTASCII`
    # etc. Same applies to HEX
else
    # key is HEX
fi

The -z you are using merely checks if the variable is empty (or zero), expr length $BLAH lets you figure out the length of the variable, and the cut command is the one that lets you strip them back to the appropriate sizes.

Edit: And wahey he finally joins the ranks of Senior Members!

[Nick_the_Greek]

OK Gitsnik

Sorry for being late to respond. It was a hell of day, today. I think I got it now. I have hard time with sed. It's not fully understandable by me, until now. It will be.

As always, most of this is untested (or deliberately flawed) to make sure you have to figure it out for yourself

Where is joy of making if you spoonfeed me ? I most cases when I try to find a solution for something, while I do searching, I learn x100 more.

Anyway. I am starting to believe that it is fate's (or yours ) decision to carry me out in your shoulders.

Thank you, again

Nick

PS Get out of my way newbies. Here comes a Senior member.

[Gitsnik]

sed is a joy once you get it - there is a page full of one liners on sourceforge, as well as one similar for awk and others.

Anyway. I am starting to believe that it is fate's (or yours ) decision to carry me out in your shoulders.

I doubt the Moirae have anything to do with me - though they might because you keep asking questions I have answers to!

[thorin]

It's not pretty but you could also simply try the command with the given input and then check the exit status based on the $? environment variable.

[Nick_the_Greek]

It's not pretty but you could also simply try the command with the given input and then check the exit status based on the $? environment variable.

This is what I already did.

Maybe you missed out my first post Thorin.

.....
iwconfig wlan0 key $key >/dev/null 2>&1

if [ $? != 0 ]; then
	echo "Your key is `echo ${#key}` characters long"
	echo "It should be : a) 10 or 26 ASCII characters long"
	echo "          or : b) 5 or 13 HEX characters long" 
else
	echo "Valid key"
fi

Yesterday I finished that. It is not that difficult. I just needed some help with `sed`.

Thank you for trying.

[thorin]

Ya I didn't bother reading your code, oh darn....