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.