这个例子说明了怎样在Linux下shell脚本中从数据文件读取特定的域（field）并进行操作。例如，假设文件employees.txt的格式是{employee-name}:{employee-id}:{department-name}，以冒号进行划分，如下所示。

$ cat employees.txt

Emma Thomas:100:Marketing Alex Jason:200:Sales Madison Randy:300:Product Development Sanjay Gupta:400:Support Nisha Singh:500:Sales

下面的shell脚本说明了如何从这个employee.txt文件中读取特定的域（field）。

$ vi read-employees.sh

#!/bin/bash IFS=: echo "Employee Names:" echo "---------------" while read name empid dept do    echo "$name is part of $dept department" done < ~/employees.txt

赋予脚本可执行权限后执行该脚本

$ chmod u+x read-employees.sh

$ ./read-employees.sh Employee Names: --------------- Emma Thomas is part of Marketing department Alex Jason is part of Sales department Madison Randy is part of Product Development department Sanjay Gupta is part of Support department Nisha Singh is part of Sales department