read Command

The read command reads a line from a file or standard input.

where:

read name	Accept a line from stdin, assign it to the ksh variable name.
`read` n1 n2`...`	Accept a line from stdin, assign the first word to n1, the second word to n2, etc. The last name receives all of the remainder of the line if there are more words in the input than names.
`read` name`?`prompt	Print prompt on stderr, then accept a line from stdin and assign it to name.
`read -e ...`	Treat backslash at the end of a line as a line continuation character (default).
`read -r ...`	Do not treat backslash specially.
`read -u` n `...`	Read from file descriptor n rather than stdin .