You can use process substitution if you're on a shell that supports it (e.g., bash, ksh, or zsh):

while read sid p_name p_age ; do ...; done <  <(get_names)

You can use process substitution if you're on a shell that supports it (e.g., bash, ksh, or zsh):

while read sid p_name p_age ; do ...; done <  <(get_names)

This is required in bash if you want the final link of your pipeline to be your running shell (so that it may have an effect on your running shell):

for sh in bash ksh zsh; do 
     echo $sh:; $sh -c 'while read var; do i=$var
     done < <(printf "%s\n" 1 2); echo $i '
done

Output:

bash:
2
ksh:
2
zsh:
2

Whereas with a regular pipeline:

for sh in bash ksh zsh; do 
     echo $sh:; $sh -c 'printf "%s\n" 1 2 | 
         while read var; do i=$var; done ; echo $i '; 
done

the assignment doesn't stick because bash runs the while loop in a subshell rather than the current shell:

bash:

ksh:
2
zsh:
2