Reading a text file into a variable in shell script

Question

Hello I'm trying to save a text file(let's call it file.dat (it's a UTF-8 Unicode text) into a variable in a script I'm making. I want to call the file.dat like : ./myscript file.dat (or something similar). Having a command line in code in the form of variable=file.dat won't help.

I'm new to shell so I apologize if the question is not very specific

var=$(<"$1") should work in bash

Mark Setchell
– Mark Setchell

2016-10-17 10:04:31 +00:00
Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 10:04 — Mark Setchell
– Mark Setchell, Commented Oct 17, 2016 at 10:04

holygeek · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-17 09:12:40Z

5

Some thing like this should get you started:

#!/bin/bash

content=$(cat "$1")  # This is how you slurp the content of the file

echo "Content of $1:"
echo "$content"

answered Oct 17, 2016 at 9:12

holygeek

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banetl · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-17 09:13:06Z

2

Try something like this :

var=$(cat $1)

then var will contain the content of your file

answered Oct 17, 2016 at 9:13

banetl

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