Grep results to store in a shell variable

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have the results of a grep with -n store in a shell variable
ie
VAR=`grep -n -e 'PATTERN' file`
How ever I am missing the line breaks in the variable , How do I store the resualts of grep with many lines in to a variables. I want the varable should be the sawmway as we do the grep

grep -n -e 'PATTERN' file`

shoeld be the same way as that of

var=`grep -n -e 'PATTERN' file`
echo $var

I need the $var for further processing

2 
for mLine in `grep -n 'PATTERN' file`
do
  echo 'mLine = '${mLine}
done
3

fanstastic it worked ! My file is very large , so I do not want to grep it again and again! Instead do s single grep and store all insatnces together
Thanks

4

If you want to keep the value in a variable seperated by a new line you can do something like this:

OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS='\n'

var=`grep -n -e 'PATTERN' file`
echo $var

IFS=$OLDIFS

Regards