I am trying to write a BASH function that will do x if program a or b finish.example:echomessage(){echo here's your messageif [[sleep 3 || read -p $*]]then   clearfi}In this scenario:a = 'sleep 3' which is supposed to run x after 3 secondsb = 'read -p $*' which is supposed to run x upon providing any keyboard input.x = 'clear' which clears the echo output if either the program times out with sleep or the user presses a key on the keyboard.
BASH function to read user input OR interrupt on timeout
bash;read
read has a parameter for timeout, you can use:read -t 3 answerIf you want read to wait for a single character (whole line + Enter is default), you can limit input to 1 char:read -t 3 -n 1 answerAfter proper input, return value will be 0, so you can check for it like this:if [ $? == 0 ]; then    echo Your answer is: $answerelse    echo Can't wait anymore!fiI guess there is no need to implement background jobs in your situation, but if you want to, here is an example:#!/bin/bashfunction ProcessA() {    sleep 1  # do some thing    echo 'A is done'}function ProcessB() {    sleep 2  # do some other thing    echo 'B is done'}echo Starting background jobs...ProcessA &  # spawn process Apid_a=$!    # get its PIDProcessB &  # spawn process Bpid_b=$!    # get its PID tooecho Waiting... ($pid_a, $pid_b)wait  # wait for all children to finishecho 'All done.'