Linux shell get device id from user input

Using whiptail for choosing USB device

For preparing whiptail or dialog command, with USB ID as TAG and description as item, you could create a little sub-shell:

read usbdev < <( declare -a array=() while read foo{,,,,} id dsc;do array+=($id "$dsc") done < <(lsusb) whiptail --menu 'Select USB device' 20 76 12 "${array[@]}" 2>&1 >/dev/tty ) 

Nota:

• The $array variable won't exist outside of the scope of subshell.
• As $array is populated by ($id "$dsc") and used by "${array[@]}", space in description won't break item list.
• syntax read foo{,,,} id dsc will read output of lsub by line, space separated, dropping 5 first words, assigning 6th word to id and rest of line to dsc.

This could render something like:

Then

echo $usbdev 1d6b:0002 

You could find more sample using whiptail, dialog and other ways at How do I prompt for Yes/No/Cancel input in a Linux shell script? and USB removable storage selector: USBKeyChooser

To extract the device IDs from lsusb, the following line can be used:

lsusb | awk '{ print $6 }' 

If you need to store the IDs within an array, use the line below:

mapfile -t device_ids < <(lsusb | awk '{ print $6 }') 

Accessing the first element in the device_ids array: echo ${device_ids[0]}