Reading file ,passing contents to array accessing contents

Question

Hi, I want to read a file ,which has some data as its contents. I have managed to read the file but not explicit values. I want to store each data in an array (leaving out spaces or other characters #$?//) and access these contents and assign them later on in my program to some variables. Any ideas? I have a file with values 1 2 3 4 5 and so on. How can I read them, store them and then access them ? It might be a no-brainer but i'm stuck. cheers