Does bash support doing a read nested within a read loop?

Question

The bash read command is very convenient for:

• read -p to prompt the user and capture input from the user
• while read

Answer 1

The simplest fix is to have the outer read read from a different file descriptor instead of standard input. In Bash, the -u option make that a little easier.

while read -u 3 item
do
  # other stuff
  read -p "choose wisely: " choice
  # other stuff
done 3< /tmp/item.list