Creating an array from a text file in Bash

Question

A script takes a URL, parses it for the required fields, and redirects its output to be saved in a file, file.txt. The output is saved on a new line each time a field has been found.

file.txt

A Cat A Dog A Mouse  etc...  

I want to take file.txt and create an array from it in a new script, where every line gets to be its own string variable in the array. So far I have tried:

#!/bin/bash  filename=file.txt declare -a myArray myArray=(`cat "$filename"`)  for (( i = 0 ; i < 9 ; i++)) do   echo "Element [$i]: ${myArray[$i]}" done 

When I run this script, whitespace results in words getting split and instead of getting

Desired output

Element [0]: A Cat  Element [1]: A Dog  etc...  

I end up getting this:

Actual output

Element [0]: A  Element [1]: Cat  Element [2]: A Element [3]: Dog  etc...  

How can I adjust the loop below such that the entire string on each line will correspond one-to-one with each variable in the array?

Answer 1

Use the mapfile command:

mapfile -t myArray < file.txt 

The error is using for -- the idiomatic way to loop over lines of a file is:

while IFS= read -r line; do echo ">>$line<<"; done < file.txt 

See BashFAQ/005 for more details.