Answering Yes to Prompts Automatically

The yes command can be used to pipe a series of y's to another command, so that the user does not have to wait to be prompted during the command's execution.

For example, after a Linux install, I went to use CPAN for the first time to install the File::Find::Rule module.

  prystasj@prystasj:~$ cpan -i "File::Find::Rule"

  CPAN is the world-wide archive of perl resources.
  ...
  Would you like me to configure as much as possible automatically? [yes]

While answering yes above will configure CPAN automaticaly, I'll still be prompted to answer questions regarding the module's dependencies:

  Writing Makefile for File::Find::Rule
  Falling back to other methods to determine prerequisites
  ---- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during ----
  ----     RCLAMP/File-Find-Rule-0.32.tar.gz    ----
      Number::Compare [requires]
      Text::Glob [requires]
  Shall I follow them and prepend them to the queue of modules
  we are processing right now? [yes]

To automatically answer yes to every question, you can pipe the output of the yes command to the prompting command. For example:

  prystasj@prystasj:~$ yes | cpan -i "File::Find::Rule"

Now I can install the module without watching the command's progress.