Korn shell: conents of a file to a variable.

var=`cat -ve file.ext`
echo $var

sorry, no.

All it does is add $ perioidically where the endline character is suppose to be.

Eugene.

var=`cat -ve file.ext`
echo $var | perl -pe 's/\$( |$)/\n/g'

the variable itself cannot contain newlines and/or carriage returns

Or, something more along the lines of

typeset -i n=0
cat file | while read LINE
do    var[n]="$LINE"
      n=$((n+1))
done


typeset -i m=0
while [ "$m" -lt "$n" ]
do      print -r -- "${var[$m]}"
        m=$((m+1))
done

Now why didn't I think of that?  Duh.

what utility to put an entiere file in an environment variable?
if you want absolutely this, you can add a newline with concatenation:  var2=$var'\n'

otherwise, is possible to put the command line in var:

var='cat file.text'

and then execute-it

$var

note: ' and not `

Have you used double quotes?

var=`cat file.text`
echo "$var"

oops, just seen JYoungmans answer... LOL :-)

See answer in my comment above.

try out this:

IFS=
var=`cat file`
echo $var
unset IFS

No comment has been added lately, so it's time to clean up this TA.
I will leave a recommendation in the Cleanup topic area that this question is:
- Answered by JYoungman

Please leave any comments here before 13/1/2003

PLEASE DO NOT ACCEPT THIS COMMENT AS AN ANSWER !

tfewster (I don't work here, I'm just an Expert :-)

per recommendation

SpideyMod
Community Support Moderator @Experts Exchange

JYoungman,
Please post all comments as comments, not as an answer unless you are certain your comment not only will solve the questioner's problem, but it is the only possible answer.  I realize it is frustrating when a questioner abandons a question, but you do have a course of action to rectify this.  Post a recommendation as tfewster did and then follow it up with a zero point question in community support and the moderators will take the appropriate action.  Thanks for your cooperation.