why empty line is not getting stored in variable

Question

I am using below code

    #! /bin/bash
for host in $(cat ./server.txt)
do 
    echo \"$host\"

done

server.txt contains :

Answer 1

empty lines are not there because they are considered whitespaces used to separate word values.

use this:

awk '{print $1}' server.txt

 server1.com
 server2.com

 server3.com


 server4.com