Hi, Any chance someone could show me some code to generate a menu based on the contents of a directory. I have had a few attempts but cannot figure out how to make it generate the case statments on the fly. I thought of perhaps generating a script by using cat into a file but this seems rather cumbersome, any one got any better ways to do this? Rebooting is a sign of Weakness!

Have you considered using the select keyword: #!/bin/bash PS3="select an item ..." select object in `ls -1` do case "$object" in file1) echo "file1";; file2) echo "file2";; file3) echo "file3";; *) echo "invalid";; esac done

Thanks for your reply nails, I managed to produce the same output as you mentioned but could not workout how to make the case staments work. ie if I choose number 1 then whatever is number is executed. ie #!/bin/bash PS3="select an item ..." select object in `ls -1` do case "$object" in $number) echo "$file1";; $number) echo "$file2";; $number) echo "$file3";; *) echo "invalid";; esac done $number would need to increase in value from 1 to however many files are in theat directory. $file would need to match the $number entry If anyone has any idea how this can be achived that would be great. Rebooting is a sign of Weakness!

You might try this, but I can't guarantee the flexiblity of the solution: #!/bin/ksh menu_str=`ls -1 file*` #echo $menu_str # build an array and the file variables cnt=0 for i in $menu_str do menu_item[cnt]=${i} eval ${i}=\${i} ((cnt=$cnt+1)) done select object in $(echo "${menu_item[*]}") do case "$object" in $file1) echo "file1";; $file2) echo "file2";; $file3) echo "file3";; *) echo "invalid";; esac done

Thanks again nails for your help. I ended up with this script which will require a little work but does what I am after. Thought someone may also find it usefull. ROOTDIR="/proc/acpi" TMOUT=60 PS3='Pick one of the above: ' select i in `ls $ROOTDIR` do PS3='Choose Action: ' select a in "list" "print" "edit" "quit" do case "$a" in list ) ls $ROOTDIR/$i;break ;; print ) cat $ROOTDIR/$i;break;; edit ) ${EDITOR-vi} $ROOTDIR/$i;break ;; quit ) break ;; "") echo you must select one of the above ;; esac done exit 0 done Rebooting is a sign of Weakness!