waiting to enter any key does not work in while loop

Question

i am using read -p "Press any key to continue" in my script. This works fine except when it is in a while loop like

while read TEST_NAME  ; do
    read -p "Press any key..."
    echo "Executing:"
done <$MT_TEST_ROOT_DIR/automation.mts

i am suspecting it is because of the enclosing while looping doing the read as well. so what would be the solution for it

Possible duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6883363/read-input-in-bash-inside-a-while-loop — Benjamin W., Feb 22 '16 at 22:42

jlliagre · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-22T22:31:36.193

1

The issue is indeed the enclosing redirection. You can simply redirect the inner read input from /dev/tty (your keyboard) that way:

while read TEST_NAME  ; do
    read -p "Press any key..." < /dev/tty
    echo "Executing:"
done <$MT_TEST_ROOT_DIR/automation.mts

edited Feb 22 '16 at 22:31

answered Feb 22 '16 at 22:18

jlliagre

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 22 '16 at 22:20

Both reads are reading from the same input file. Use a different file descriptor for the first read, letting the second read inherit whatever your script is using.

while read TEST_NAME <&3  ; do
    read -p "Press any key..."
    echo "Executing:"
done 3< "$MT_TEST_ROOT_DIR"/automation.mts

waiting to enter any key does not work in while loop

2 Answers2