read(1)                                                      read(1)


       NAME
             read - read standard input

       SYNOPSIS
             read [-r] var1 ...

       DESCRIPTION
             Each call to read obtains the next line (up to a newline) from
             the standard input and parses it into fields, assigning each
             field value to the shell variables that are listed as
             parameters.

             Let
             m     be the number of input fields on an input line.
             n     be the number of shell variables on the read command
                   line.

             then

             If m == n
                   The ith field is assigned to the ith variable.

             If m >  n
                   The ith field is assigned to the ith variable; however,
                   the excess fields are concatenated onto the nth
                   variable.

             If m <  n
                   The ith field is assigned to the ith variable and the
                   excess variables are assigned NULL strings.

             Fields are defined to be sequences of characters separated by
             characters from the IFS (inter-field separators) environment
             variable (default values are blank, tab, and newline).  A
             backslash at the end of a line will cause input to continue
             onto the next line.

             -r    Suppress special treatment of the backslash character.
                   Each backslash character will become part of the input
                   line.

       Exit Codes
             The exit code is 0 whenever data is returned.  When no data
             can be obtained, the exit status is 1.




                           Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 1

      read(1)                                                      read(1)


      USAGE
            It is often used within shell programs to read from the user's
            terminal

            The LC_CTYPE environment variable defines the processing of
            the codesets used in the input file.  [See LANG in
            environ(5).]

      REFERENCES
            ksh(1), sh(1)






































                          Copyright 1994 Novell, Inc.               Page 2