while loops [ newbie ]

be forewarned that a bash fan is writing this message with little to no perl/c++ experience. i have a file $file that is full of usernames and descriptions, one per line. i have another variable $username that i would like to compare against each line in the file and remove the line that matches the username field identically. $filename charles routers craig systems tony portmasters i would think that a while loop could do this and possibly write the output, minus the line i want to take away to a temp file and then copy it over. in bash i would use a statement like: while read i; do < blah > done < $filename > $filename.tmp however i am not certain how to read in the contents of a file for comparison within a while loop. this is just going to be an uphill thread since my next question will be for the < blah > portion :) thanks in advance -charles -- ** There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence. **