How to write an array ignoring space characters in shell scripting?

Question

I have a text file which consists of say ..following information say test.text:

an
apple of 
one's eye

I want to read these lines in an array using shell scripting by doing a cat test.text. I have tried using a=(`cat test.text`), but that doesn't work as it considers space as a delimiter. I need the values as a[0]=an , a[1]=apple of , a[2]=one's eye. I don't want to use IFS. Need help, thanks in advance..!!

Answer 1

In bash 4 or later

readarray a < test.text

This will include an empty element for each blank line, so you might want to remove the empty lines from the input file first.

In earlier versions, you'll need to build the array manually.

a=()
while read; do a+=("$REPLY"); done < test.text

Answer 2

One of various options you have is to use read with bash. Set IFS to the newline and line separator to NUL

IFS=$'\n' read -d $'\0' -a a < test.txt

Answer 3

Plain sh

IFS='
'
set -- $(< test.txt)
unset IFS
echo "$1"
echo "$2"
echo "$@"

bash

IFS=$'\n' a=($(< test.txt))
echo "${a[0]}"
echo "${a[1]}"
echo "${a[@]}"

I'm inclined to say these are the best of the available solutions because they do not involve looping.

Answer 4

Let's say:

cat file
an

apple of

one's eye

Use this while loop:

arr=()
while read -r l; do
    [[ -n "$l" ]] && arr+=("$l")
done < file

TEST

set | grep arr
arr=([0]="an" [1]="apple of" [2]="one's eye")