``read`` reads from standard input and either writes the result back to standard output (for use in command substitution), or stores the result in one or more shell variables. By default, ``read`` reads a single line and splits it into variables on spaces or tabs. Alternatively, a null character or a maximum number of characters can be used to terminate the input, and other delimiters can be given. Unlike other shells, there is no default variable (such as :envvar:`REPLY`) for storing the result - instead, it is printed on standard output.
Masks characters written to the terminal, replacing them with asterisks. This is useful for reading things like passwords or other sensitive information.
Uses the output of the shell command *PROMPT_CMD* as the prompt for the interactive mode. The default prompt command is ``set_color green; echo read; set_color normal; echo "> "``
Uses the *PROMPT_STR* as the prompt for the interactive mode. It is equivalent to ``echo $PROMPT_STR`` and is provided solely to avoid the need to frame the prompt as a command. All special characters in the string are automatically escaped before being passed to the :doc:`echo <echo>` command.
Enables syntax highlighting, tab completions and command termination suitable for entering shellscript code in the interactive mode. NOTE: Prior to fish 3.0, the short opt for **--shell** was **-s**, but it has been changed for compatibility with bash's **-s** short opt for **--silent**.
Causes read to split the input into variables by the shell's tokenization rules. This means it will honor quotes and escaping. This option is of course incompatible with other options to control splitting like **--delimiter** and does not honor :envvar:`IFS` (like fish's tokenizer). It saves the tokens in the manner they'd be passed to commands on the commandline, so e.g. ``a\ b`` is stored as ``a b``. Note that currently it leaves command substitutions intact along with the parentheses.
Without the ``--line`` option, ``read`` reads a single line of input from standard input, breaks it into tokens, and then assigns one token to each variable specified in *VARIABLES*. If there are more tokens than variables, the complete remainder is assigned to the last variable.
If no option to determine how to split like ``--delimiter``, ``--line`` or ``--tokenize`` is given, the variable ``IFS`` is used as a list of characters to split on. Relying on the use of ``IFS`` is deprecated and this behaviour will be removed in future versions. The default value of ``IFS`` contains space, tab and newline characters. As a special case, if ``IFS`` is set to the empty string, each character of the input is considered a separate token.
With the ``--line`` option, ``read`` reads a line of input from standard input into each provided variable, stopping when each variable has been filled. The line is not tokenized.
If no variable names are provided, ``read`` enters a special case that simply provides redirection from standard input to standard output, useful for command substitution. For instance, the fish shell command below can be used to read data that should be provided via a command line argument from the console instead of hardcoding it in the command itself, allowing the command to both be reused as-is in various contexts with different input values and preventing possibly sensitive text from being included in the shell history::
When running in this mode, ``read`` does not split the input in any way and text is redirected to standard output without any further processing or manipulation.
