Reading files line by line (while read) in Bash Scripting - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Reading files line by line (while read)

📖 Scenario: You have a text file that contains a list of your favorite fruits, one fruit per line. You want to read this file line by line and print each fruit with a friendly message.

🎯 Goal: Build a bash script that reads a file called fruits.txt line by line using while read loop and prints each fruit with the message: "I like <fruit>".

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a file named fruits.txt with the exact fruits listed.

Create a variable to hold the filename.

Use a while read loop to read the file line by line.

Print each fruit with the message: "I like <fruit>".

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Reading files line by line is common when processing logs, configuration files, or lists in scripts.

💼 Career

Many automation and system administration tasks require reading files line by line to handle data or perform actions.

1

Create the fruits.txt file

Create a file named fruits.txt with these exact lines:
Apple
Banana
Cherry

Bash Scripting

# Create the file fruits.txt with the fruits listed
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use cat with a here document to create the file.

2

Set the filename variable

Create a variable called filename and set it to fruits.txt.

Bash Scripting

cat  fruits.txt
Apple
Banana
Cherry
EOF

# Create a variable called filename and set it to fruits.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use filename="fruits.txt" to assign the variable.

3

Read the file line by line

Use a while read loop with variable fruit to read each line from $filename.

Bash Scripting

cat  fruits.txt
Apple
Banana
Cherry
EOF

filename="fruits.txt"

# Use while read loop to read each fruit from $filename
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use while read fruit; do ... done < "$filename" to read lines.

4

Print the output

Run the script and print the output lines exactly as:
I like Apple
I like Banana
I like Cherry

Bash Scripting

cat  fruits.txt
Apple
Banana
Cherry
EOF

filename="fruits.txt"

while read fruit; do
    echo "I like $fruit"
done < "$filename"

# Run the script to print the output
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just run the script to see the output.