I've a loop to read a file line by line. Now each line has 4 columns seperated by space. How do I get 4 diff column values using awk to 4 seperate variables? eg of a line: adas 343434 adas@adas.org Informationsystems n=`wc -l < get_dwsdid.txt` i=1 while [ "$i" -le "$n" ] do line=`cat get_dwsdid.txt | head -$i | tail -1` echo $line i=`expr $i + 1` done

The following code will pass the file only once, reading the first 4 words of each line into the variables: while read a b c d excess do echo "a=$a b=$b c=$c d=$d" done < get_dwsdid.txt

Hi: First, I'd take Jim's advice; I'ts the most efficient. Another way is to use the set command to parse the lines read into shell variables: while read line do set `echo $line` echo $1 echo $2 echo $3 echo $4 done < get_dwsdid.txt If you really insist on using awk, you can use it with the eval command: while read line do eval `echo $line|awk ' { printf("a=%s; b=%s; c=%s; d=%s\n", $1, $2, $3, $4) } '` echo $a echo $b echo $c echo $d done < get_dwsdid.txt Regards, Nails

Jim & Nails, I tried both your suggestions and it just worked great!! Thank you guys very much. Sam.