I sympathise with your predicament - sounds like an MOD engagement I was involved with a coupla years ago...

If it is really command line, then the simplest solution would surely be the select command within the Korn shell e.g.

#! /bin/ksh
PS3="Select an item:"
select ITEM in opt1 opt2 opt3 opt4 ; do
    case "$ITEM" in
        opt1) ... ;;
        opt2) ... ;;
        opt3) ... ;;
        opt4) ... ;;
        *) echo "Bad call" ;;
    esac
done
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