Shell Programming and Scripting

COUNTER=`wc -l ~/number_list | awk '{print $1}'`

You don't need awk:

Code:

COUNTER=`wc -l < ~/number_list

while [ $COUNTER -ne 0 ]; do
$COMMAND $NUMBER
let COUNTER=COUNTER-1

That is non-standard. The portable syntax for arithmetic is:

Code:

COUNTER=$(( $COUNTER - 1 ))

done

You don't need a COUNTER.

Code:

file=$HOME/number_list
while read num
do
 : do whatever
done < "$file"

But you don't even need a loop to store it in an array:

Code:

array=( $( cat "$file" ) )

In bash or ksh93, cat isn't needed:

Code:

array=( $( < "$file" ) )

In bash 4.0, you can use the new builtin command, mapfile:

Code:

mapfile -t array < "$file"