Read user input while looping through find results using read

Question

I'm using the following statement in a bash script to iterate through the results of find:

find ./ -type f \( -iname \*.mkv -o -iname \*.mp4 \) | while read line; do 

Now the problem is I can't ask for user input using "read" in this loop as it will give me the next line from the the find results.

read mainmenuinput 

will give me the next filename instead of waiting for user input.

How can I work around this?

Thanks, rayfun

Answer 1

You can use a different file descriptor for the find results, if you use a redirection from a process substitution into the loop:

# this reads from fd 3 while IFS= read -r line <&3; do # this reads from fd 0 (stdin) read -p "Enter your input" main_menu_input # .. do stuff done 3< <( find ... ) 

This harms readability a bit as the find command shows up at the bottom, but it gives you the maximum flexibility wrt file descriptors. Additionally, the while loop is not run in a subshell due to piping, so if you're setting variables in the while loop that you rely on in code following the loop, you're now OK.