how to print asterisk without its wild card functionality

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have three cron entries in a file /cron_entries as

15 * * * * /bin/hourjobs > /tmp/hrjob.log 2>&1
..................
....................

I am trying to read this file in for loop using code below:

cron=`cat /cron_entries`
for line in $cron
do
printf "%s\n" "$line" >> /tmp/$$current_cron
done

When i see in /tmp/$$current_cron , the "*" is getting replaced with all files in that directory.. I need to enter asterisk as it is into file without its wildcard functionality..
can i get solution for this...

2

cat /cron_entries|while ln=`line`
do
echo "$ln" >> /tmp/$$current_cron
done

3

A better way:

while read line; do
   echo "$line" >> /tmp/$$current_cron
done < /cron_entries
4 
cat cron_entries>>/tmp/$$current_cron

with zsh:

<cron_entries>>/tmp/$$current_cron
5

Thanks for all ur help