How can I prompt for yes/no style confirmation in a zsh script?

I'm adding this answer because every time you want to ask the user for confirmation, you also want to act on it. here's a function that prompts with read -q (thanks, other answers!) and branches on the result to do what you want (in this case, git stuff):

git_commit_and_pull() { # http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Shell-Builtin-Commands.html#index-read if read -q "choice?Press Y/y to continue with commit and pull: "; then git add . && git commit -m 'haha git goes brrr' && git pull else echo echo "'$choice' not 'Y' or 'y'. Exiting..." fi } 

See ZSH Manual for documentation of ZSH's read. Try:

read REPLY\?"This is the question I want to ask?" 

I created two utility scripts for this:

• read-string.sh reads a string from input (requires user to press enter)
• read-char.sh reads a single char from input (does not require pressing enter)

Both scripts work fine regardless of whether the user is using bash or zsh.

#!/bin/bash # read-string.sh # eg: my_string=$(./read-string.sh); echo "my_string: $my_string" # bash `read` manual - https://ss64.com/bash/read.html # # read [-ers] [-a aname] [-d delim] [-i text] [-n nchars] # [-N nchars] [-p prompt] [-r] [-s] [-t timeout] [-u fd] # [name...] # # -r Do not treat a Backslash as an escape character. The backslash is considered to be part # of the line. In particular, a backslash-newline pair can not be used as a line continuation. # Without this option, any backslashes in the input will be discarded. # You should almost always use the -r option with read. # zsh `read` manual - http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Shell-Builtin-Commands.html#index-read # # read [ -rszpqAclneE ] [ -t [ num ] ] [ -k [ num ] ] [ -d delim ] # [ -u n ] [ name[?prompt] ] [ name ... ] # # -r Raw mode: a ‘\’ at the end of a line does not signify line continuation and backslashes in the line # don’t quote the following character and are not removed. if [ -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then read -r "answer?" else read -r answer fi echo "$answer" 

#!/bin/bash # eg: my_char=$(read-char.sh); echo "my_char: $my_char" # bash `read` manual - https://ss64.com/bash/read.html # # read [-ers] [-a aname] [-d delim] [-i text] [-n nchars] # [-N nchars] [-p prompt] [-r] [-s] [-t timeout] [-u fd] # [name...] # # -r Do not treat a Backslash as an escape character. The backslash is considered to be part # of the line. In particular, a backslash-newline pair can not be used as a line continuation. # Without this option, any backslashes in the input will be discarded. # You should almost always use the -r option with read. # -n nchars read returns after reading nchars characters rather than waiting for a complete line of input. # zsh `read` manual - http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Shell-Builtin-Commands.html#index-read # # read [ -rszpqAclneE ] [ -t [ num ] ] [ -k [ num ] ] [ -d delim ] # [ -u n ] [ name[?prompt] ] [ name ... ] # # -q Read only one character from the terminal and set name to ‘y’ if this character was ‘y’ or ‘Y’ # and to ‘n’ otherwise. With this flag set the return status is zero only if the character was ‘y’ or ‘Y’. # This option may be used with a timeout (see -t); if the read times out, or encounters end of file, # status 2 is returned. Input is read from the terminal unless one of -u or -p is present. # This option may also be used within zle widgets. # -r Raw mode: a ‘\’ at the end of a line does not signify line continuation and backslashes in the line # don’t quote the following character and are not removed. if [ -n "$ZSH_VERSION" ]; then read -r -q "answer?" else read -r -n 1 answer fi echo "$answer" 

Thanks to Olaf for his original answer.