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up vote 7 down vote favorite
2

Bash lets you specify a redirected input before a command:

$ <lines sed 's/^/line: /g'
line: foo
line: bar

Bash also lets you redirect input to a compound command like a while loop:

$ while read line; do echo "line: $line"; done <lines
line: foo
line: bar

However, when I try to specify a redirected input before a while loop, I get a syntax error:

$ <lines while read line; do echo "line: $line"; done
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `do'

What's wrong with this? Is it not possible to specify a redirected input before a compound command in Bash? If so, why not?

share|improve this question
    
(I specifically want to know because I'm directing a command's output to a while loop in the current shell context via process substitution, and I'd prefer it if the first part of the code didn't have to appear after the second part.) –  Stuart P. Bentley Sep 17 '14 at 14:04

4 Answers 4

up vote 9 down vote accepted

man bash says:

... redirection operators may precede or appear anywhere within a simple command or may follow a command.

while is not a simple command.

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2  
Aw man. (Definition of simple commands) –  Stuart P. Bentley Sep 17 '14 at 14:38
up vote 3 down vote

You can use that substitution, if you want to precede the input:

cat lines | while read line; do echo "line: $line"; done
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I need this to be executed within the current shell context - no pipelines. (The code in the question was just a simplified example.) –  Stuart P. Bentley Sep 17 '14 at 14:35
up vote 5 down vote

You can in zsh, not in bash and choroba has already pointed you to the documentation, but if you want to have the redirection before, you can do things like:

< file eval '
  while IFS= read -r line; do
    ...
  done'

Or (on systems with support for /dev/fd/n):

< file 3<< 'EOF' . /dev/fd/3
while IFS= read -r line; do
  ...
done
EOF

(not that's you'd want to do it).

You can also do:

exec 3< file
while IFS= read -r line <&3; do
  ...
done
exec 3<&-

(note that exec will exit the script if file can't be open).

Or use a function:

process()
  while IFS= read -r line; do
    ...
  done

< file process
share|improve this answer
    
Wonder if eval and /dev/fd/ routes are equally fast. –  Deer Hunter Sep 17 '14 at 19:31
1  
@DeerHunter, << EOF involves creating a temp file, filing it up and then open it, read it and interpret as you read it. It's bound to be less fast, though probably not noticeably as it's all going to happen in memory anyway. –  Stéphane Chazelas Sep 17 '14 at 20:09
    
"Use a function" doesn't really help - I still have to write the function before the code that gets directed into it (although I suppose I can write a function for that, with the two functions in either order). –  Stuart P. Bentley Sep 17 '14 at 22:21
    
command exec can handle the exit issue as w/ other builtins. but it gets in way too late too handle the reserved word bits. –  mikeserv Sep 18 '14 at 5:38
    
@StéphaneChazelas What's the reason for using a temporary file rather than a pipe? –  kasperd Sep 18 '14 at 10:09
up vote 2 down vote

You can use exec to redirect the stdin.

In a script:

exec < <(cat lines)
while read line ; do echo "line: $line"; done

You can't use in a login shell though (it will dump the file on the stdout and exit). In that case you can open a different file descriptor:

exec 3< <(cat lines)
while read -u 3 line ; do echo "line: $line"; done

For reference: Using exec

share|improve this answer
    
And if I'm using stdin for something else I ihave to surround the code in exec 3<&0 and exec <&3, right? (that or use &3 for the redirect ie. your second example) –  Stuart P. Bentley Sep 17 '14 at 18:07
    
Yes, you "save" the current stdin to another file descriptor and when you finished you can restore it. (it's well explained in the first example in the linked doc) –  spider Sep 18 '14 at 8:55

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