bash - How can I read words (instead of lines) from a file?

Question

I've read this question about how to read n characters from a text file using bash. I would like to know how to read a word at a time from a file that looks like:

example text
example1 text1
example2 text2
example3 text3

Can anyone explain that to me, or show me an easy example? Thanks!

Answer 1

The way to do this with standard input is by passing the -a flag to read:

read -a words
echo "${words[@]}"

This will read your entire line into an indexed array variable, in this case named words. You can then perform any array operations you like on words with shell parameter expansions.

For file-oriented operations, current versions of Bash also support the mapfile built-in. For example:

mapfile < /etc/passwd
echo ${MAPFILE[0]}

Either way, arrays are the way to go. It's worth your time to familiarize yourself with Bash array syntax to make the most of this feature.