If the file's syntax is compatible with the shell's, you can simply use the source command, the lone dot:
With the example you have provided, this would assign "abc" to the variable
hs, "def" to
hs1, and "ghi" to
hs2.
If that's not what you want, you could perhaps read in one line at a time, remove everything up through the first equals sign, and then assign the result to some variable.
Code:
for var in var1 var2 var3
do
read line
eval $var=\""${line#*=}"\"
done <file.cf
This reads three lines and assigns anything after the first equals sign on each of those lines to the selected variable name; successively, var1, var2, and var3.
The use of
eval is a rather advanced technique; I would advise against this if you can come up with a simpler solution.
