example-lines.txt

this
is
an
example
of
a
newline
delimited
file

EXAMPLE.txt

ryan@bender fun-with-arrays.RHRjym $ bash reading-files-as-arrays.sh example-lines.txt
this is the first example's length: 46
this is the first example's first item:
this
is
an
example
of
a
newline
delimited
file



this is the second example's length: 4
this is the second example's first item:
this
ryan@bender fun-with-arrays.RHRjym $

reading-files-as-arrays.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

# first, we read the file using stdin
example1=$(< "${1}")
# then, we read the file using `read`, assigning it to the array variable
# "example2", and using raw input
read -r -a example2 < "${1}"

echo -e "this is the first example's length: ${#example1}"
echo -e "this is the first example's first item:\n${example1[0]}"

echo -e "\n\n"

echo -e "this is the second example's length: ${#example2}"
echo -e "this is the second example's first item:\n${example2[0]}"