> I need something like that: > [...] As usual, many things are possible. For reading data from a file, "read" (a shell built-in) is popular. For example: alp$ cat c2.dat line=1;col=1 line=1;col=2 line=2;col=1 line=2;col=2 line=3;col=1 line=3;col=2 alp$ cat c2.sh #!/bin/sh while read col1 col2 extra ; do echo "col1: >${col1}<" echo " col2: >${col2}<" done alp$ ./c2.sh < c2.dat col1: >line=1;col=1< col2: >line=1;col=2< col1: >line=2;col=1< col2: >line=2;col=2< col1: >line=3;col=1< col2: >line=3;col=2< (For a good time, try data with more than two columns, and see what's in "extra", too.) If "man sh" doesn't help, then a Web search for keywords like, say: shell read file might.