Comments on: How To Parse Text Files Line by Line in Unix scripts

By: ming

ming — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 04:46:07 +0000

why not use read line
for example
cat aFile| while read line; do echo $line; done

By: zenith191

zenith191 — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:17:04 +0000

One problem with Nails solution is that it removes leading whitespace. This causes loss of indentation.

By: Gleb Reys

Gleb Reys — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:16:29 +0000

Nails, thanks for finding the courage to speak up! I'm glad you recognize the thinking pattern I've followed (trying to cat a file and expecting a line at a time)!

I'm glad you brought the `cat $1` part up too, not only should it be `cat $FILE` in my particular example, but I have never heard about the UUOC, so look forward to reading a whole page about it.

THANK YOU and please comment on anything else in the future – like I said somewhere, I'm not trying to look all-knowing, and I welcome any opportunity to learn and improve myself.

By: Nails Carmody

Nails Carmody — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 22:38:31 +0000

I don't mean to be rude of condescending, but you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. While your UNIQUE variable idea is clever, why don't you just use while loop:

while read LINE
do
echo "$LINE"
done < /etc/redhat-release

Also, your `cat $1` is often referred to as a UUOC. I found this link to be very instructional:

http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html

Sorry I had to disagree with you.

Regards,

Nails

By: Gleb Reys

Gleb Reys — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:29:08 +0000

I wish I thought about this a few years earlier – so many scripts of mine could be much better!

By: n00b

n00b — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 10:19:23 +0000

Just what I was looking for! Thanks!