Pipe output to bash function

Question

I have as simple function in a bash script and I would like to pipe stdout to it as an input.

jc_hms(){
  printf \"$1\"
}

I\'d like to use

Answer 1

To answer your actual question, when a shell function is on the receiving end of a pipe, standard input is read by the first command executed inside the function. Since printf is the first and only command in your function, standard input is ignored. There are several ways around that, including using the read built-in to read standard input into a variable which can be passed to printf:

jc_hms () {
    read foo
    hr=$(($foo / 3600))
    min=$(($foo / 60))
    sec=$(($foo % 60))
    printf "%d:%02d:%02d" "$hr" "$min" "$sec"
}

However, since your need for a pipeline seems to depend on your perceived need to use awk, let me suggest the following alternative:

printstring=$( jc_hms $songtime )

Since songtime consists of a space-separated pair of numbers, the shell performs word-splitting on the value of songtime, and jc_hms sees two separate parameters. This requires no change in the definition of jc_hms, and no need to pipe anything into it via standard input.

If you still have a different reason for jc_hms to read standard input, please let us know.

Answer 2

The proposed solutions require content on stdin or read to be only conditionally called. Otherwise the function will wait for content from the console and require an Enter or Ctrl+D before continuing.

A workaround is to use read with a timeout. e.g. read -t <seconds>

function test ()
{
  # ...
  # process any parameters
  # ...
  read -t 0.001 piped
  if [[ "${piped:-}" ]]; then
    echo $piped
  fi
}

Note, -t 0 did not work for me.
You might have to use a different value for the time-out. Too small a value might result in bugs and a too large time-out delays the script.

Answer 3

1) I know this is a pretty old post

2) I like most of the answers here

However, I found this post because I needed to something similar. While everyone agrees stdin is what needs to be used, what the answers here are missing is the actual usage of the /dev/stdin file.

Using the read builtin forces this function to be used with piped input, so it can no longer be used in a typical way. I think utilizing /dev/stdin is a superior way of solving this problem, so I wanted to add my 2 cents for completeness.

My solution:

jc_hms() { 
  declare -i i=${1:-$(</dev/stdin)};
  declare hr=$(($i/3600)) min=$(($i/60%60)) sec=$(($i%60));
  printf "%02d:%02d:%02d\n" $hr $min $sec;
}

In action:

user@hostname:pwd$ jc_hms 7800
02:10:00
user@hostname:pwd$ echo 7800 | jc_hms 
02:10:00

I hope this may help someone.

Happy hacking!

Answer 4

I like user.friendly's answer using the Bash built-in conditional unset substitution syntax. Here's a slight tweak to make his answer more generic, such as for cases with an indeterminate parameter count:

function myfunc() {
    declare MY_INPUT=${*:-$(</dev/stdin)}
    for PARAM in $MY_INPUT; do
        # do what needs to be done on each input value
    done
}

Answer 5

You can't pipe stuff directly to a bash function like that, however you can use read to pull it in instead:

jc_hms() {
  while read -r data; do
      printf "%s" "$data"
  done
}

should be what you want

Answer 6

Or, you can also do it in a simple way.

jc_hms() {
    cat
}

Though all answers so far have disregarded the fact that this was not what OP wanted (he stated the function is simplified)