Read a file using a bash script

cat file | while read line
do
  echo "a line: $line"
done

EDIT:

To get file contents into a var use:

foo="`cat file`"

There's no reason to use cat here -- it adds no functionality and spawns an unnecessary process.

while IFS= read -r line; do
  echo "a line: $line"
done < file

To read the contents of a file into a variable, use

foo=$(<file)

(note that this trims trailing newlines).

Related