How to loop back to original select menu from a case within a case statement?

I have the following bash script called q.txt. I want to run a select statement with a case statement. How can I re-display the menu options after a) case has been run. . /home/chh1/q.txt won't run after echo "a" in case a).

It is clear to me why this does not work but is there a way to loop back to the original select menu after a case has been executed?

#!/bin/bash
select x in a b c d
do
case $x in a) echo "a" . /home/chh1/q.txt;; b) echo "b";; c) echo "c";; d) echo "You are now exiting the program" break;; *) echo "Invalid entry. Please try an option on display";;
esac
done

1 Answer

You can add an outer loop driven by a variable.

#!/bin/bash
anew=yes
while [ "$anew" = yes ]; do anew=no select x in a b c d do case $x in a) echo "a" anew=yes break;; b) echo "b";; c) echo "c";; d) echo "You are now exiting the program" break;; *) echo "Invalid entry. Please try an option on display";; esac done
done

The initial anew=yes makes the while loop execute at least once. Inside the loop the variable is set to no, then a slightly modified version of your select loop is executed. The idea is: when the script exits the select loop, the variable should be either yes or no, and the body of the while loop should be repeated or not, respectively. The case a simply sets the variable to yes and breaks the select loop.