Read n lines at a time using Bash

Question

I read the help read page, but still don\'t quite make sense. Don\'t know which option to use.

How can I read N lines at a time using Bash?

Answer 1

I came up with something very similar to @albarji's answer, but more concise.

read_n() { for i in $(seq $1); do read || return; echo $REPLY; done; }

while lines="$(read_n 5)"; do
    echo "========= 5 lines below ============"
    echo "$lines"
done < input-file.txt

The read_n function will read $1 lines from stdin (use redirection to make it read from a file, just like the built-in read command). Because the exit code from read is maintained, you can use read_n in a loop as the above example demonstrates.