while read loop preserving leading whitespace - Shell Programming and Scripting

zazzybob · #1 (**permalink**) 06-07-2004

Hi all,

I've been trying to get this to work for ages to no avail. I've searched this site and googled but cannot find a satisfactory answer.

I've got a while loop, like this

Code:

while read line
do
    echo "$line"
done < file_name

Now, my problem is that most of the lines in the file have indentation (this program parses indented source code).

The indentation is lost during the loop and everything appears left-justified.

Now, am I missing something *really* silly here?

Peace,
ZB