mjhjmtu

So I'm writing a script to basically run my docker applications from quickly, I've got everything working just fine it does everything I coded it to do.

I just have a question about one of my functions:

function prompt_user() 
 echo "Enter details for docker build! If it's a new build, you can leave Host Directory and Remote Directory blank."
 echo "If you've already assigned variables and are running the host you can leave the already filled vars blank if you entered them before"
 echo " "
 echo "Enter details:"
 read -p "Image Name: " IMAGE_NAME
 read -p "IP Address: " IP_ADDRESS
 read -p "Port 1: " PORT_ONE
 read -p "Port 2: " PORT_TWO
 read -p "Container Name: " CONTAINER_NAME
 read -p "Node Name: " NODE_NAME
 read -p "Host Directory (Can leave this blank if you're building a new image): " HOST_DIRECTORY
 read -p "Remote Directory (Can leave this blank if you're building a new image): " REMOTE_DIRECTORY

Would there be an easier way to use read less repetitively and assign all the inputs to the vars?

Here is the full script if you'd like to look at it.

I'm not sure how much cleaner this is than your existing function but using an associative array (requires bash v4.0 or later) combined with a for loop you could use read once.

function prompt_user() 
 declare -A prompt_questions
 vars=(IMAGE_NAME IP_ADDRESS PORT_ONE PORT_TWO CONTAINER_NAME NODE_NAME HOST_DIRECTORY REMOTE_DIRECTORY)
 prompt_questions=(
 [IMAGE_NAME]='Image Name'
 [IP_ADDRESS]='IP Address'
 [PORT_ONE]='Port 1'
 [PORT_TWO]='Port 2'
 [CONTAINER_NAME]='Container Name'
 [NODE_NAME]='Node Name'
 [HOST_DIRECTORY]="Host Directory (Can leave this blank if you're building a new image)"
 [REMOTE_DIRECTORY]="Remote Directory (Can leave this blank if you're building a new image)"
 )
 cat <<EOF
Enter details for docker build! If it's a new build, you can leave Host Directory and Remote Directory blank.
If you've already assigned variables and are running the host you can leave the already filled vars blank if you entered them before

Enter details:
EOF
 for var in "$vars[@]"; do
 read -rp "$prompt_questions[$var]: " "$var"
 done

I don't think your current code is that bad.
The only repeating part is read -p, which is just a couple of characters. You can't get rid of the variable names or prompts, anyway.

_{(Though, there's the thing that someone might prefer command-line arguments instead of scripts that ask stuff interactively, but that's a question of preference.)}

Anyway, since I said I didn't particularly like the double-listing of variable names @Jesse_b's associative array requires, here's another alternative:

prompt_user() 
 queries=(
 IMAGE_NAME='Image Name'
 IP_ADDRESS='IP Address'
 PORT_ONE='Port 1'
 PORT_TWO='Port 2'
 CONTAINER_NAME='Container Name'
 NODE_NAME='Node Name'
 HOST_DIRECTORY="Host Directory (Can leave this blank if you're building a new image)"
 REMOTE_DIRECTORY="Remote Directory (Can leave this blank if you're building a new image)"
 )
 echo "Enter details for docker build! If it's a new build, you can leave Host Directory and Remote Directory blank."
 echo "If you've already assigned variables and are running the host you can leave the already filled vars blank if you entered them before"
 echo " "
 echo "Enter details:"
 for query in "$queries[@]"; do
 read -rp "$query#*=: " "$query%%=*"
 done

"$query#*=" and "$query%%=*" effectively split the string in query on the first equal sign.