Split string into an array in Bash

Question

In a Bash script I would like to split a line into pieces and store them in an array.

The line:

Paris, France, Europe

I would like

Answer 1

Try this

IFS=', '; array=(Paris, France, Europe)
for item in ${array[@]}; do echo $item; done

It's simple. If you want, you can also add a declare (and also remove the commas):

IFS=' ';declare -a array=(Paris France Europe)

The IFS is added to undo the above but it works without it in a fresh bash instance

Answer 2

t="one,two,three"
a=($(echo "$t" | tr ',' '\n'))
echo "${a[2]}"

Prints three

Answer 3

I came across this post when looking to parse an input like: word1,word2,...

none of the above helped me. solved it by using awk. If it helps someone:

STRING="value1,value2,value3"
array=`echo $STRING | awk -F ',' '{ s = $1; for (i = 2; i <= NF; i++) s = s "\n"$i; print s; }'`
for word in ${array}
do
        echo "This is the word $word"
done

Answer 4

Pure bash multi-character delimiter solution.

As others have pointed out in this thread, the OP's question gave an example of a comma delimited string to be parsed into an array, but did not indicate if he/she was only interested in comma delimiters, single character delimiters, or multi-character delimiters.

Since Google tends to rank this answer at or near the top of search results, I wanted to provide readers with a strong answer to the question of multiple character delimiters, since that is also mentioned in at least one response.

If you're in search of a solution to a multi-character delimiter problem, I suggest reviewing Mallikarjun M's post, in particular the response from gniourf_gniourf who provides this elegant pure BASH solution using parameter expansion:

#!/bin/bash
str="LearnABCtoABCSplitABCaABCString"
delimiter=ABC
s=$str$delimiter
array=();
while [[ $s ]]; do
    array+=( "${s%%"$delimiter"*}" );
    s=${s#*"$delimiter"};
done;
declare -p array

Link to cited comment/referenced post

Link to cited question: Howto split a string on a multi-character delimiter in bash?

Answer 5

The accepted answer works for values in one line.
If the variable has several lines:

string='first line
        second line
        third line'

We need a very different command to get all lines:

while read -r line; do lines+=("$line"); done <<<"$string"

Or the much simpler bash readarray:

readarray -t lines <<<"$string"

Printing all lines is very easy taking advantage of a printf feature:

printf ">[%s]\n" "${lines[@]}"

>[first line]
>[        second line]
>[        third line]

Answer 6

This is similar to the approach by Jmoney38, but using sed:

string="1,2,3,4"
array=(`echo $string | sed 's/,/\n/g'`)
echo ${array[0]}

Prints 1