How to use the read command in Bash?

Question

When I try to use the read command in Bash like this:

echo hello | read str
echo $str

Nothing echoed, while I think str<

Answer 1

Another alternative altogether is to use the printf function.

printf -v str 'hello'

Moreover, this construct, combined with the use of single quotes where appropriate, helps to avoid the multi-escape problems of subshells and other forms of interpolative quoting.