Question

Is it possible to save last entered value of a variable by the user in the bash script itself so that I reuse value the next time while executing again?.

Eg:

#!/bin/bash
if [ -d "/opt/test" ]; then
echo "Enter path:"
read path
p=$path
else 
.....
........
fi

The above script is just a sample example I wanted to give(which may be wrong), is it possible if I want to save the value of p permanently in the script itself to so that I use it somewhere later in the script even when the script is re-executed?.

EDIT:

I am already using sed to overwrite the lines in the script while executing, this method works but this is not at all good practice as said. Replacing the lines in the same file as said in the below answer is much better than what I am using like the one below:

...
....
PATH=""; #This is line no 7
DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"; 
name="$(basename "$(test -L "$0" && readlink "$0" || echo "$0")")";
...
if [ condition ]
fi
path=$path
sed -i '7s|.*|PATH='$path';|' $DIR/$name;

Answer 1

Someting like this should do the asked stuff :

#!/bin/bash

ENTERED_PATH=""

if [ "$ENTERED_PATH" = "" ]; then
    echo "Enter path"
    read path
    ENTERED_PATH=$path

    sed -i 's/ENTERED_PATH=""/ENTERED_PATH='$path'/g' $0
fi

This script will ask user a path only if not previously ENTERED_PATH were defined, and store it directly into the current file with the sed line.

Maybe a safer way to do this, would be to write a config file somewhere with the data you want to save and source it . data.saved at the begining of your script.