Storing lines of a file in a variable

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

i want to store the output of 'tail -5000 file' to a variable.

If i want to access the contents of that variable, it becomes kinda difficult because when the data is stored in the variable, everything is mushed together. you dont know where a line begins or ends.

so my question is, how can i store the results of "tail -5000 file" into a variable and be able to access the contents of that variable as though it is an actual file?

2

It does not get mushed, the only thing is that you must use quotes around the variable when referencing it:

var=$(tail -5000 file)
printf "%s\n" "$var"
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3

It wont if the echoed variable is double quoted...

VAR=$(tail -5000 file)
echo $VAR     # everything is mushed together
echo "$VAR"   # preserves newlines so nothing is mushed together
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4

Please bear in mind that the buffer space for tail -n is limited.
Make sure that the command works on your computer.
On my computer it does not work because the buffer space in tail -n is too small: see man tail :

ls -ald bigfile
-rw-r--r--   1 root       sys        606832653 Jun 25  2010 bigfile
tail -5000 bigfile | wc -l
187

@SkySmart
For this and future postings, please post what Operating System and version you have and what Shell you are using.

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