How do I split a string on a delimiter in Bash?

Question

I have this string stored in a variable:

IN=\"bla@some.com;john@home.com\"

Now I would like to split the strings by ; delimite

Answer 1

The following Bash/zsh function splits its first argument on the delimiter given by the second argument:

split() {
    local string="$1"
    local delimiter="$2"
    if [ -n "$string" ]; then
        local part
        while read -d "$delimiter" part; do
            echo $part
        done <<< "$string"
        echo $part
    fi
}

For instance, the command

$ split 'a;b;c' ';'

yields

a
b
c

This output may, for instance, be piped to other commands. Example:

$ split 'a;b;c' ';' | cat -n
1   a
2   b
3   c

Compared to the other solutions given, this one has the following advantages:

• IFS is not overriden: Due to dynamic scoping of even local variables, overriding IFS over a loop causes the new value to leak into function calls performed from within the loop.

• Arrays are not used: Reading a string into an array using read requires the flag -a in Bash and -A in zsh.

If desired, the function may be put into a script as follows:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

split() {
    # ...
}

split "$@"