Question

Whenever I execute a linux command that outputs multiple lines, I want to perform some operation on each line of the output. generally i do

command something | while read a
do
  some operation on $a;
done

This works fine. But my question is, Is there some how I can access each line by a predefined symbol( dont know how to call it) /// something like $? .. or .. $! .. or .. $_

Is it possible to do

cat to_be_removed.txt | rm -f $LINE

is there a predefined $LINE in bash .. or the previous one is the shortest way. ie.

cat to_be_removed.txt | while read line; do rm -f $line; done;

Answer 1

xargs is what you’re looking for:

cat to_be_removed.txt | xargs rm -f

Watch out for spaces in your filenames if you use that one, though. Check out the xargs man page for more information.