Need to assign the contents of a text file to a variable in a bash script

Question

I am very new to making bash scripts, but my goal here is to take a .txt file I have and assign the string of words in the txt file to a variable. I have tried this (no clue

Answer 1

The $() construction returns the stdout from a command.

file_contents=$(cat answer.txt)

Answer 2

In bash $(< answer.txt) is a builtin shorthand for $(cat answer.txt)

I suspect you're running this print:

NAME  
    run-mailcap, see, edit, compose, print − execute programs via entries in the mailcap file

Answer 3

You need the backticks to capture output from a command (and you probably want echo instead of print):

file1=`cat answer.txt`
echo $file1