Shell script won't reading non- .sh files

Question

#!/bin/bash

while read p
do
  echo "$p"
done < numbers.txt

This script is only reading and allowing me to print .sh files. I have tried it with .txt files (like above but it does not print anything.)

Please add a sample of the contents of numbers.txt. The filename suffix means nothing on Unix systems. Both .sh and .txt files are just text files. — Kusalananda, Feb 18 '19 at 19:26
Is numbers.txt properly line-terminated? What happens if you change while read p to while read p || [ -n "$p" ]? — steeldriver, Feb 18 '19 at 19:30
Your file does not contain a single terminated line. read can only read complete lines. — Kusalananda, Feb 18 '19 at 19:33
I guess it would be more correct to say that read reads the line (and assigns it to variable p) but returns false, having encountered EOF while doing so: hence the body of the while loop is not executed. — steeldriver, Feb 18 '19 at 19:40
@steeldriver That would be a more correct way of phrasing it, yes. In fact, what I said was not correct. — Kusalananda, Feb 18 '19 at 19:41

Matej · Answer 1 · 2019-02-18T19:26:29.693

0

That's because you are printing test not variable p Try this:

#!/bin/bash

while read p
do
  echo "$p"
done < numbers.txt

Test:

$ cat numbers.txt
1
2
345
678
9
$ bash script.sh
1
2
345
678
9
$

edited Feb 18 '19 at 19:26

answered Feb 18 '19 at 19:22

Matej

my apologies. I forgot to edit that ou, I was just testing something there. But even when changing to echo "$p", nothing prints – Cesa Salaam Feb 18 '19 at 19:24
@CesaSalaam It works for me, are you sure that numbers.txt file is not empty? – Matej Feb 18 '19 at 19:27

1 Answers1