user_account()
{
  set -x
  nodename=$1
# set userid to user0
  userid="user0"
  echo outside:pid $$
  cat $MY_DIR/user_accounts | while read line
     do
#       line="node1 user1"
        echo inside do: pid $$ line:$line userid:$userid
        poss_node=`echo $line |awk '{print $1}'`
        echo after node: pid $$:userid:$userid
        userid=`echo $line | awk '{print $2}'`
        echo inside useraccount: pid $$: userid $userid
# print userid here - prints user1 & user2 in the 2 iterations.
        if [[ $poss_node = $nodename ]]
          then
            echo before break: pid $$: userid : $userid
#prints user2 - fine.
            break
           fi
     done
  echo End: pid $$ : userid:$userid
#prints user0 here ???????????
}

Your "read" is occurring in a subshell and your variable is not visible to the parent.

There are several ways to work around this. Depending on the size of the data, I will use an array.

IFS='
'
set -A ARRAY $(< MY_DIR/user_accounts)
for i in ${ARRAY[@]}
do
   ...
done

Thanks it worked.


J