How to pass text file contents as argument to console application?

Question

What is the command line to run a console application with input argument fed from text file?

text_file:
This is a simple text file with characters and other
symbols including tabs and new lines

The console should get

$./myapp "This is a simple text file with characters and other symbols including tabs and new lines"

Solution 1

./myapp `cat text_file`

Or

./myapp $(cat text_file)

Or use double quotes to pass all the text as a single argument

./myapp "$(cat text_file)"
./myapp "`cat text_file`"

Solution 2

Very simple, cat it.

cat file | some_script.sh

Have a look here for further help.

Comments

[coteyr]

This works too, or theres about 10,000 other ways.

[Chesnokov Yuriy]

many thanks, let me try them. will the contents be passed in quotes? to treat them as a single argument since there are spaces in text file

[Eric Carvalho]

To pass all the text as single argument you should run ./myapp "$(cat text_file)".

[Eric Carvalho]

This will redirect the content of file to the standard input of some_script.sh, not as command line argument.

[coteyr]

True but the question was "with input argument fed from text file" and if some_script.sh takes stdin then the "effect" is the same without having to worry about argument length issues or escaping.

[Chesnokov Yuriy]

yes, that is the case