Take nth column in a text file

Question

I have a text file:

1 Q0 1657 1 19.6117 Exp
1 Q0 1410 2 18.8302 Exp
2 Q0 3078 1 18.6695 Exp
2 Q0 2434 2 14.0508 Exp
2 Q0 3129 3 13.5495 Exp

Answer 1

If you are using structured data, this has the added benefit of not invoking an extra shell process to run tr and/or cut or something. ...

(Of course, you will want to guard against bad inputs with conditionals and sane alternatives.)

...
while read line ; 
do 
    lineCols=( $line ) ;
    echo "${lineCols[0]}"
    echo "${lineCols[1]}"
done < $myFQFileToRead ; 
...