Korn Shell: Read variable length file with variable number of fields and store fields in variables

Because I want to use the variable in various context throughout the program and don't want to have to re-parse the file again

if  n may be any number, how will your program decide whether or not to use the variable $field96 ?
would it not be easier to use an array?

Are you able to give us a practical example of what you are trying to do?

If I have a count of the number of fields in the comma delimited record (==n) I will be able to use it as an index into the array; of course, I am thinking of loading an array. I would look for something like

for (i=first record; i<=last record; i++)
{
  for  (j=firstfield; j<=lastfieldofcurrent record; j++)
   {
    array[ij]= field j in record read from file
   ... do my stuff
   }
}
array[i][ would be a ksh variable;
PLease let me know if this is not clear.
Thank you for your trouble,
C:)

while read -A array ; do
...
done < file

try

while read line
do
    set $line
    echo $#
done < file

the variables are the positional parameters $1 $2 .... and the number of fields is $#

What is the syntax for using the positional parameters when the # of positional parameters varies? I would not like to have to say var1=$1 but var=$i with $i set to $1 through $# in turn.
Thank you,
C:)

while read -A array ; do echo ${array[${#array[*]}-1]} ; done < file

while read -A array ; do for var in ${array[*]} ; do echo $var ; done ; done < file

here a sample shell script, which illustrates how to use positional parameters

i=1
while [ $i -le $# ]
do
  eval echo $"$i"
  i=`expr $i + 1`
done

Please note that this script needs modification to handle more than 9 positional parameters

I am sorry I haven't responded to ozo and omarfarid sooner; neither solution worked on the solaris ksh.
I finally got the following to work:
IFS=,
while read record
do
  count=0
  for i in $record
     do
        if [[ $count = 0 ]]; then
          testcase=$i
        elif [[ $count = 1 ]]; then
          testcaseID=$i
        elif [[ $count = 2 ]]; then
          rootID=$i
        fi
        let count+=1
     done
    echo $testcase $testcaseID $rootID
  done < automap.csv
IFS=$OIFS

Since your syntax wasn't quite correct for my environment though your help did get me on the right track (and google web pages) I won't award the total number of points and give each of you 100 points.

Your last piece of code and original description are very different.

Your code above can be reduced to:

awk -F, '{print $1,$2,$3}' automap.csv

                                              

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