How to do it...

You can use various options of the read command to obtain different results, as shown in the following steps:

1. The following statement will read n characters from input into the variable_name variable:

        read -n number_of_chars variable_name

Consider this example:

        $ read -n 2 var
        $ echo $var

1. Read a password in the non-echoed mode:

        read -s var

1. Display a message with read using the following command:

        read -p "Enter input:"  var

1. Read the input after a timeout:

        read -t timeout var

Consider the following example:

        $ read -t 2 var
        # Read the string that is typed within 2 seconds into
        variable var.

1. Use a delimiter character to end the input line:

        read -d delim_char var

 Consider this example:

        $ read -d ":" var
        hello:#var is set to hello