Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a file something like:

a b c d
sdfsdf f f f
f fffff
dfdf

Now when i read it as

while read line
do
echo $line
done< file

I get the o/p as

a b c d
sdfsdf f f f
f fffff
dfdf

i.e the spaces are trimmed. I want to retain the spaces as well.
Would appreciate help. want to avoid awk.

Thanks

What spaces? I don't see any spaces in your example


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The original file is

a<space><space><space>b<space> c<space><space> d
sdfsdf f<space><space> f f
f<space><space><space> fffff
dfdf

---------- Post updated at 09:40 PM ---------- Previous update was at 09:07 PM ----------

Original file

Code:

a	b    c d
sdfsdf	f   f	f
f     ffff
dfdf

Code:

# while read line;do echo "$line";done < file
a       b    c d
sdfsdf  f   f   f
f     ffff
dfdf

Double quotes

PS: Don't forget to edit your first post and add [CODE] tags for data sample and script code.

echo will echo all arguments using argument delimeter and newline.

echo $line
- shell look the line, if there is variable =>

Code:

echo a       b     c d

- between a, b, c and d has only whitespaces=argument delimeter, not space.
- then shell call echo using argument a, b, c, d => output is:
a b c d

echo "$line"
- shell look the line, is there variable =>

Code:

echo "a       b     c d"

- echo get only one argument

Code:

while read line
do

        echo "$line"
        # is not same as
        echo $line
done < file

Thanks everyone...It works that way...