Id like to convert it to uppercase for the simple purpose of formatting so it will adhere to a future case statement. As I thought case statements are case sensitive.
I see all over the place the tr command used in concert with echo commands to give you immediate results such as:
echo "Enter in Location (i.e. SDD-134)"
read answer # user enters "cfg"
echo $answer | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]' # which produced
cfg # first echo not upper?
echo $answer #echo it again and it is now upper...
CFG
This version doesn't require bash, but uses a pipe:
read -p "Enter in Location (i.e. SDD-134) " answer
answer=$(echo "$answer" | tr '[:lower:]' '[:upper:]')
echo "$answer"
And if you're using bash and don't care about portability you can replace the second line with this:
answer="${answer^^}"
Check the "Parameter Expansion" section of bash's man page for details.