Shell script reading files

Shell Script Trick No. 2
Reading files. Over the years I have used a couple of different methods for reading configuration files.
I present the two I have used the most with the second being my current favorite.

cat config | while read line
do
LINE=`echo $line | cut -d: -f2`
if [ "$LINE" = "#" ];then
  echo 
else
  echo "$LINE:\c"
fi
done

#The read command eats leading spaces
exec <  ${datafile}
while read line  
do
 # Don't process lines with comments just skip them. 
 if ( echo $line | grep "^#" > /dev/null 2>&1 );then
   continue
 fi
done