Fallback selector - uses 'dmenu' under Xorg, 'select' otherwise

menu-selector.sh

# -*- bash -*-

# This is a small selector function inspired, and making use of,
# 'dmenu' from Suckless Tools. Based on the lines piped to it, it
# prompts the user to select one and then returns that choice. When
# run under Xorg, it will make use of 'dmenu', otherwise the builtin
# 'select' construct will be used, providing a fallback mechanism.

function menu-selector {
    declare -a items=()
    # Capture input items into an array
    while IFS= read -r item; do
        items+=( "$item" )
    done
    if xhost &> /dev/null; then
        # Xorg environment
        print -l ${items[@]} | dmenu -l 10
    else
        # TTY environment
        select item in ${items[@]}; do
            echo $item
            break
        done < /dev/tty
    fi
}

Example usage:

 ls -1 | menu-selector | awk '{printf "Your selected file: %s\n",$1}'