Interview › Scripting (Bash, Groovy)
What does read -r do, and why is the -r flag important? [Basic]
Answer
read -r tells read not to treat backslashes as escape characters. It is important because paths, regexes, Windows-style strings, and log lines can contain backslashes that must be preserved exactly.
Technical explanation
Without -r, read may remove or alter backslashes, corrupting input data.
Use IFS= read -r line for reliable line-oriented file processing.
Use read -r -a array when intentionally splitting a line into a Bash array.
Hands-on example
printf '%s\n' 'C:\temp\app.log' > paths.txt
while IFS= read -r path; do
printf 'path=%s\n' "$path"
done < paths.txt
Preparing for an interview?
Check how well your resume matches the role with our free resume checker— match score, ATS check, and the skills you're missing.
More Scripting (Bash, Groovy) interview questions
- What is the purpose of the shebang line, and what does #!/bin/bash do? [Basic]
- What is the difference between sh and bash? [Basic]
- How do you make a script executable and run it? [Basic]
- What is the difference between running a script with ./script.sh, bash script.sh, and source script.sh? [Basic]
- What does sourcing a script do differently from executing it? [Basic]
- How do you declare a variable in Bash, and why are spaces around = not allowed? [Basic]
- What is the difference between $var and ${var}? [Basic]
- What is the difference between single quotes and double quotes in Bash? [Basic]