Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a file that contains the following lines

Code:

the brown quick fox 
jumped over 
the white laze dog 
0123456789

I wanted to put the contents of this file into a variable so I used this code:

Code:

VAR_LIST=`cat $2`

where $2 is the file name passed as an argument to the script

If I examine the contents of VAR_LIST i find that the lines were transposed into one single line;

Code:

the brown quick fox jumped over the white laze dog 0123456789

And that's not what I wanted, I wanted the to keep the same structure as the file, i.e. individual lines.

Please advise.

Thanks,
Nomaad

I think you will find that the variable actually contains what you wanted, if you examine it with env or set. When using it, however, you will need to use double quotes around the variable in order to avoid "flattening" the whitespace.

Code:

echo "$VAR_LIST"

But that's exactly what I used to get the result I don't want i.e. all lines in one line.

If you examine the variable with set or env, do you see the line breaks?

If not, try adding double quotes to the assignment, too:

Code:

VAR_LIST="`cat "$2"`"

(The double quotes around $2 are for good form, but not really essential to this discussion.)