hello all.. I have been browsing / searching through the forum and have yet not been able to find what I was looking for.

I am fairly new to ksh and my task is to create a function that reads in an input file:

*****************
2

3
1

abc
def
ghi

/dev/sid/
*****************
(NOTE: the spaces between data sets above DOES NOT exist but it's only there for ease of understanding)

the first line (2 in this case) consists of the numbert of data sets followed by the number of parameters in the 2 datasets (3 and 1).

(abc,def,ghi) are the parameter values for the first data set and (/dev/sid) is tha value for the second data set.

The above 2 data sets need to be scanned into different arrays and hence this is what i came up with:

cat ${INPUT_FILE} | while read LINE #processing steps for all common parameters, assign each common parameters to the array variable COMMON_PARAMETER_CONTENT
do

if [[ $count -le $PARAMETER_CONTENT ]]
then
SUBSET_ARRAY[count]=$LINE
((count+=1))
continue
fi

i = 0
countA = 0
countB = 0

while [[ $countB -l (SUBSET_ARRAY[i]) ]] //need a check here to prevent overflowing..!
do
while [[ $countA -le (SUBSET_ARRAY[i]) ]]
do
[I] SUBSETDATA + "i" = $LINE
((countA+=1))
((DATA_TOTAL_LINE+=1))
done
((i+=1))
countA = 0
done

My question is.. will the highlighted, Italicised line work? Can i loop thru' and put the diff datasets into diff arrays using the "string join" ? Thanks in advance and sorry for the long post.

Sid