Learning Linux Shell Scripting - Second Edition

File handling - reading line by line

You will learn how to use the while loop and the read command to read a file line by line. You will learn more about the while loop in the upcoming chapters.

Let's write the file_07.sh script, as follows:

#!/bin/bash 
echo "Enter the name of file for reading" 
read file_name 
exec<$file_name 
while read var_line 
do 
  echo $var_line 
done 

For executing the preceding script, we will need to create a file with some text in it. Then, we can pass this filename for reading purposes.