hi, i need to pick up a line from a file and store it in a variable.i dont know the number of lines that the file contains...so i cannot specify it by a linenumber. i need to continue this till the last line of the file. so i think it has to be proabably some type of a loop. please help thanks

Raxit: You're right, it's a loop: while read line do echo $line done data.file # need a less than sign between "done" # and "data.file" The above reads each line of data.file. You've neglected to tell us how to identify the line you want. Regards, nails

Raxit, You can try with this one also ... #!/bin/sh IFS=' ' for i in `cat data_file` do ### If you are matching the whole line. if [$i = "Something you are searching"] then echo "U found me" fi ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Or if you are searching for a particular line number wherer you will find that line or hae a match .. you can use this.. cat -n file_name | grep "whatever u r searching" | awk -F" " '{print $1}' it will give you the line number in the file .. [ it wont consider the blank lines !]