Shell script reading name value pairs from a file

Question

Given a config file, IterVars.txt, of the following format, I need to create a script that will call three of the variables listed.

[itervars]
idx1 = 13.0
trigger1 = True
trigger2 = False
startres = 0.123456789
endres = 0.000000123

I've tried several key value variable assignment explanations I found here, but it seems all of them have an issue with the spaces in the file, in that it interprets text after the space as a new command. How do I call these variables in a shell script as:

$idx1=13.0
$trigger1=True
$trigger2=False

Possible duplicate of [How do I grab an INI value within a shell script?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6318809/how-do-i-grab-an-ini-value-within-a-shell-script) — wjandrea, Dec 21 '19 at 19:15
Since the config file is short and you only need three values, it's probably easiest to use the AWK solution [in this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/6318837/4518341). You could functionalize it to reduce code duplication. — wjandrea, Dec 21 '19 at 19:17

Romeo Ninov · Accepted Answer · 2019-12-22T05:18:39.703

1

You your case and because of the space symbols you can try something like:

source <(grep = IterVars.txt|sed -E $'s/[ \t]*=[ \t]*/=/')

in your script and you will have variables defined in to the script

edited Dec 22 '19 at 05:18

answered Dec 21 '19 at 19:32

Romeo Ninov

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Use this sed command to make sure we handle the whitespace characters even better: `sed -E $'s/[ \t]*=[ \t]*/=/'`. – codeforester Dec 21 '19 at 20:54
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You guys rock! This works exactly as needed. Merry Christmas :) – Brendan McBreen Dec 22 '19 at 18:52

Shell script reading name value pairs from a file

1 Answers1