read from different files

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

i have the following files with content

file a content;

1234|wert|

file b content;

2345|byte|

file c content;

9999|kilo|

i want to read the contents of three files seperately and for each of them select the first column and output below

welcome 1234
welcome 2345
welcome 9999
2 
$ cat file
1234|wert|
$ cat file | IFS="|" read a b
$ echo "welcome $a"
welcome 1234
3

how can i use this script to read about 100 or more txt file and output the same message

4 
cd /dir1/dir2
for i in *
do
  cat $i | IFS="|" read a b 
  echo "welcome $a"
done
5 
sed 's/\([^|]*\).*/welcome \1/' files
6

AWK version

awk -F\| 'FNR==1{print "Welcome "$2}' *.txt
7

That should be $1, not $2.

Regards,
Alister