What are you running this on, is this byron's rc on unix? I just tried the secript I posted, cut and pasted into a tiny shell scropt called testread, and it just worked™
maybe some other part of your script has a problem? My script below -----snip-----snip----- #!/bin/rc cat $1 | while(line=`{read}){ echo $line } -----snip-----snip----- Also, I didn't have the time to read all of your previous question, but I think what you are after is $"varname, this expands to the value of the variable but as a single argument, no matter if it, when it was assigned, had multiple, white space seperated words in it. for example: (NB: hugo% is my prompt) hugo% fred=(a b c d) hugo% echo $fred^-letter a-letter b-letter c-letter d-letter hugo% echo $"fred^-letter a b c d-letter -Steve