Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all,
I am having a hard time in determining this. I have a shell script, in which I build a variable in a certain format (-i 'x x.in x.out' -i 'y y.in y.out' -i 'z z.in z.out) within a while loop. But that variable is getting lost if I read it after the while loop is ended. I tried "export".., that did not seem to work either...! please help somebody. thanks.

variable not retaining value
Keeping vars set in while loop with redirection
Why doesn't redirecting a loop work as intended? (Bourne shell)

thanks .. , but the way I have my while loop is this...

awk '/^[^#]/ {print $0}' file | while read f1 f2 f3 f3
do
.....
...
build the variable - v
done

read the variable v. (Here v is empty)

i will keep reading the links... in the mean time.

Um, in case you don't know what a pipe does, proc1 | proc2 forces proc2 to redirect it's input to a pipe which proc1 is writing to. If proc2 is a loop being managed by a bourne shell, it will become a subshell.