Bash script and stdin

Question

I am having a C program which requires to read from stdin. This is one of the requirements, and it cannot change.

I have written a simple bash script that creates all the directories I want, handles the output etc. and also compiles and runs my program.

When I run my program it waits for the user to give an input from the stdin :

I want to be able to give that input from the bash - so do not let the user give the input (there is a reason for that). So ideally, I want somehow the input to be visible to the user but given from the script.

If I write something like this :

./task2
cat <<< "my input here"

It runs the task, and the cat command runs when the task has finished. I want somehow to enforce that cat whenever the program requires input from the user.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

If I understood you correctly, you can use tee for this purpose. In the Bash script, let's assume the following line runs your compiled C program:

./my_program

Replace that with:

printf "%s\n" "my input here" | tee /dev/tty | ./my_program

This will print my input here to your terminal device and pipe it to ./my_program on its stdin so it can read it.