What does the following loop do: while read i; echo $i; done < file.txt?

• A. It creates a variable i for each line in file.txt and echoes them one at a time.
• B. It prints the words in the file in reverse order.
• C. It copies the file to standard output once.
• D. It prints a single line containing each line.

Answer: (A)

The loop uses read to pull input line by line into a variable named i, with the file contents provided through input redirection from file.txt. On each iteration, echo prints the current value of i, so every line from the file is output one per line. This is a common pattern for processing files line by line in a shell.

Note: because the variable is expanded unquoted, leading/trailing spaces and multiple spaces can be altered by word splitting. If you need to preserve the exact line content, use echo "$i" or printf '%s\n' "$i".