This works because read breaks everything on whitespace (IFS), so if var1 is empty or starts with '#', then skip it.

while read var1 var2 var3 var4; do
   case $var1 in
       ''|\#*) continue ;;         # skip blank lines and lines starting with #
   esac
   echo "var1: '$var1'"
   # stuff with var1, etc.
done < "${1:-default_config_file}"

Then input has to be redirected into the loop instead of to the while command list. The "${1:-default_config_file}" expands to the first command line parameter if not empty, otherwise expands to default_config_file you can also use variable expansion, etc in the default value string.

This works because read breaks everything on whitespace (IFS), so if var1 is empty or starts with '#', then skip it.

while read var1 var2 var3 var4; do
   case $var1 in
       ''|\#*) continue ;;         # skip blank lines and lines starting with #
   esac
   echo "var1: '$var1'"
   # stuff with var1, etc.
done < "${1:-default_config_file}"

Then input has to be redirected into the loop instead of to the while command list. The "${1:-default_config_file}" expands to the first command line parameter if not empty, otherwise expands to default_config_file you can also use variable expansion, etc in the default value string.

Because you're interested in minimizing pre-processing, I think this is equivalent, but also removes all comments:

while read line; do
    echo "${line%%#*}" | {
        read var1 var2 var3 var4
        [ -z "$var1" ] && continue
        # stuff with var1, etc.
        for i in 1 2 3 4; do eval echo "\"var$i: \$var$i\""; done  #debug only!
    }
done < "${1:-default_config_file}"

This uses the shell parameter expansion substring processing feature. ${line%%#*} expands to the original value of line except the first # and everything after it are removed. Load that into var1-4 and continue as usual. The test to continue shortens because we now only need to check for empty string, not #.

I think this works because read breaks everything on whitespace (IFS), so if var1 is empty or starts with '#', then skip it.

while read var1 var2 var3 var4; do
   case $var1 in
       ''|\#*) continue ;;
   esac
   echo "$var1"
   # stuff with var1, etc.
done

I tried it this way, without the "< $tempfile" after var4.

This works because read breaks everything on whitespace (IFS), so if var1 is empty or starts with '#', then skip it.

while read var1 var2 var3 var4; do
   case $var1 in
       ''|\#*) continue ;;         # skip blank lines and lines starting with #
   esac
   echo "var1: '$var1'"
   # stuff with var1, etc.
done < "${1:-default_config_file}"

Then input has to be redirected into the loop instead of to the while command list. The "${1:-default_config_file}" expands to the first command line parameter if not empty, otherwise expands to default_config_file you can also use variable expansion, etc in the default value string.