i'm reading a few variables from a file using
while read a b c; do
(something)
done < filename
is there an elegant way to skip a variable (read in an empty value), i.e. if I want a=1 b= c=3, what should I write in the file?
Right now i'm putting
1 "" 3
and then use
b=$(echo $b | tr -d \" )
but this is pretty cumbersome, IMHO
any ideas?