Read values from configuration file and use in shell script

Question

I have a text configuration file something like this :

## COMMENT
KEY1=VALUE1  ## COMMENT
KEY2=VALUE2

KEY3=VALUE3  ## COMMENT

## COMMENT

As you can see, this has key value pairs, however it also contains comment lines and blank lines. In some cases, the comments are on the same line as the key value pair.

How do I read this config file and set the keys as variable names in a shell script so that I can use them as :

echo $KEY1 

Answer 1

just:

source config.file

then you could use those variables in your shell.

Answer 2

For example here is the content of your config file:

[email protected]
user=test
password=test

There are two ways:

1. use source to do it.

   source $<your_file_path>
   echo $email
   

2. read content and then loop each line to compare to determine the correct line

   cat $<your_file_path> | while read line
   do 
     if [[$line == *"email"*]]; then
       IFS='-' read -a myarray <<< "$line"
       email=${myarray[1]}
       echo $email
     fi
   done
   

The second solution's disadvantage is that you need to use if to check each line.

Answer 3

Just source the code in the beginning of your code:

. file

or

source file