If say, your "parameters" file simply contains one line of 3 parameters: arg1 arg2 arg3 and your script is (say) "myscript": echo "\$1 = $1" echo "\$2 = $2" echo "\$3 = $3" Then you can use this as: cat parameters | xargs myscript which will produce: $1 = arg1 $2 = arg2 $3 = arg3 ================================================================= However, if your "parameters" file contains more than one line: arg1 arg2 arg3 nextarg1 nextarg2 nextarg3 and you want to execute 'myscript' twice, with 3 args each time you could do this instead: while read myparams do echo "\$1 = $1" echo "\$2 = $2" echo "\$3 = $3" done < parameters which would produce $1 = arg1 $2 = arg2 $3 = arg3 $1 = nextarg1 $2 = nextarg2 $3 = nextarg3 BTW - if your parameters file has more than one line, as above, the first approach would assign: $1 = arg1 $2 = arg2 $3 = arg3 $4 = nextarg1 $5 = nextarg2 $6 = nextarg3 Take your pick. As always "there's more than one way to skin a cat" Graham -----Original Message----- From: Mark Hounschell [mailto:markh@compro.net] Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 5:06 PM To: suse-linux-e@suse.com Subject: [SLE] [OT] script help? How can you use the contents of a file as command line parameters for a script? The file has 3 colums and each colume I want to be command line $1 $2 $3 respectivly for the script. $script < file does not seem to work Thanks and Regards Mark -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com