reading a value from a textfile using bash script (beginner problem)

[AndrewJS]

I have a text file that contains a single word and I want to write a bash script that will read the word from the text file... The following is my incorrect attempt, as it assigns the name of the textfile to the variable as opposed to the word stored within the textfile:


(assume I have a text file value.txt that has as its contents a single word, say wordone)

#!/bin/sh
for f in value.txt
do
echo $f
done

so the output of the above script is value.txt, however I want it to be wordone.
to summarise: how do I assign the value of the word contained within a textfile to a variable?

[saulius2]

Yes, for-operator in BASH expects a list of string-values.
Hence, "value.txt" is treated as the first and the only value in such list.

Below I put some changes (in unified diff format -- it's easy to understand):

 #!/bin/sh
-for f in value.txt
+for f in $(cat value.txt)
 do
 echo $f
 done

The change means we do not use "value.txt" as a string-list, but we rather output content the file (cat) and insert the result into the for-statement (into the place of dollar-sign + brackets).

[wild at heart]

Thanx to share this Info