Question

In my script i created a file that i want to use as an input source for dialog program, in order to populate the menu dialog.

In the file every line contain a number and a menu title.

INPUT=""
rm result
while read LINE
do
        case $LINE in
            '/ >'*|---*|'/ > '*)
                  continue;;
            esac
#       echo "1 $LINE "
                echo -n " 1  \"$LINE\"" >>result
done < tmpfile
#printf "%s " $INPUT
DIALOG  --menu "Latest news " 20 50 30 `cat result`

DIALOG is a function, and this is the source:

DIALOG () {
        dialog --backtitle "$TITLE" "$@"
        return $?
}

Every menu item for dialog need an identifie (in my example is the number) and a label (between double quotes “, if it is more than one word).

The problem is that even if the file content has the correct format:

1 "item number 1" 2 "item number 2" ...

The dialog command doesn’t recognize the \” as a label delimiter, but it consider it as a part of the string, resulting in a messed up menu, where i have a menu voice for every word.

but if i try to copy and pastethe same file content directly into the shell command (not using a script), the menu is showed correctly.

Any idea?

Answer 1

You can use an array to keep the results, then use proper quoting to send it to dialog:

ar=()
while read n s ; do
    ar+=($n "$s")
done < result
dialog  --menu "Latest news " 20 50 30 "${ar[@]}"

You probably do not have to create a temp file at all, you can populate the array right ahead.