Shell Programming and Scripting

Greetings all,

Been trying to do my Googling and forum searches but can't seem to lock in on a solution.

I have a script that parses a log and collects all the uniq events to a flat file. Some days might have 50 unique events, other days might have 75. (Hence my reference to dynamic.)

Sample:
ASA-3-713122
ASA-3-713902
ASA-3-752015
ASA-4-113019
ASA-4-313005
ASA-4-402117
ASA-4-402118

I'm looking for the best method to create variables by reading the flat file. I found some threads talking about arrays but I don't have any experience yet trying my hand at that.

Could anyone kindly point me to a good reference or share some samples?

Ideally I'd like to find a way to create:

v713122="ASA-3-713122"
and so on...

Thanks much,
SR

Code:

#! /bin/bash
while IFS=- read a b c
do
    eval v$c="$a-$b-$c"
done < flatfile

# Check for a variable
echo $v402118

Thanks for taking the time and posting back! Fantastic!