Unix script question (basic)

From: Piestiany7 (piestiany7_at_aol.com)
Date: 03/05/04 

Date: 05 Mar 2004 18:44:12 GMT

Some time ago on these boards someone suggested a good
way of finding out how many columns there were in a file

read x < $1
set -- $x
columns=$#

I have two questions

1) what effect is set -- $x having (ie in enabling subsequently for $# to have
meaning)

2) if we were to put this into a loop to read every single row in the file and
output the number of columns, can we use a construct like
<command> | while read row

if so what can we have for 'command'? cat looks at a field at a time

thanks.

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