Read a file using a bash script

Question

I need to read a file using a "Do/While" loop.
How can I read the contents as a string?

Here's my code:

cat directory/scripts/tv2dbarray.txt | while read line do   echo "a line: $line" done 

Error:

test.sh: line 4: syntax error near unexpected token `done' test.sh: line 4: `done' 

Answer 1

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).

Answer 2

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

EDIT:

To get file contents into a var use:

foo="`cat file`"