Simple chat server in bash, demonstrating websocketd.

chat.sh

#!/bin/bash
# Hacked together by JeroenJanssens.com on 2013-12-10
# Requires: https://github.com/joewalnes/websocketd
# Run: websocketd --devconsole --port 8080 ./chat.sh

echo "Please enter your name:"; read USER
echo "[$(date)] ${USER} joined the chat" >> chat.log
echo "[$(date)] Welcome to the chat ${USER}!"
tail -n 0 -f chat.log --pid=$$ | grep --line-buffered -v "] ${USER}>" &
while read MSG; do echo "[$(date)] ${USER}> ${MSG}" >> chat.log; done

this is neat... but I think backticks would present some serious security challenges.

I just checked and backticks are actually escaped properly. But please keep in mind that this is just a toy example. :-)

yeah, I just tested it out to see if my comment was even correct and it is not. It's properly escaped. Now I'm trying to figure out how it's properly escaped without performing the typical filter which in this case would be: USER=${USER//[^a-zA-Z0-9_]/} as well as MSG=${MSG//^a-zA-Z0-9_]/}