Hi Guys,

I have a file with the following lines

123456789 123456789
123456789XXXXXXXXX123456789

All the X here are actually spaces in the actual file.


To read this file line by line , I used the following code.

file=test.dat
cat $file | while read line
do
echo $line
done

In the output, I get something like this

123456789X123456789. All but 1 space have disappeared. Actually I need the spaces in tact. Please let me know where I went wrong.

Thanks in advance.

Dilip

while read line
do
echo "$line" # the quotes will prevent echo removing the extra spaces
done < test.dat