I am attempting to write a script that takes positional parameter arguments and then uses them later.e.g.($ myselect.sh open read ...) What I do next is attempt use the eval function, but I do not understand how to evaluate back to the args. listed. here's some code. $ sh myselect.sh open read write close PS3="Enter choice: " x=0 choice="" while true ; do for i in $@ ; do x=$(($x + 1)) echo "$x) $i" #this creates a menu list done echo $PS3 #diplay prompt read choice #get user input i=$choice #this is where it gets ugly eval $i #I want eval to determine which #arg. matches to choice var. echo "$choice ...$i" x=0 done

I figured out what I was doing wrong. Just in case anyone might care to know. Instead of assigning the read input to a var. named i, simply use following code to evaluate matching positional parameter #. eval out=\$$choice This line will match the value of the var. $choice to command line positional parameter variable. For e.g. user inputs 2 and that will make $choice == 2 but in code above eval will assign to the var. $out the string value of $2 == read