Use Bash to read line by line and keep space

Question

When I use "cat test.file", it will show

1  2   3    4 

When I use the Bash file,

cat test.file | while read data do     echo "$data" done 

It will show

1 2 3 4 

How could I make the result just like the original test file?

Answer 1

IFS='' cat test.file | while read data do     echo "$data" done 

I realize you might have simplified the example from something that really needed a pipeline, but before someone else says it:

IFS='' while read data; do     echo "$data" done < test.file 

Answer 2

Actually, if you don't supply an argument to the "read" call, read will set a default variable called $REPLY which will preserve whitespace. So you can just do this:

$ cat test.file | while read; do echo "$REPLY"; done