tokenize a string in shellscript

Question

how do I tokenize a string in shellscript?
for example: given string "a:b:c" and delimiter ":", I would like to return an array {a,b,c}
it's equivalent to java's StringTokenizer.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/918886/split-string-based-on-delimiter-in-bash — Anders Lindahl, Aug 16 '11 at 06:11

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 16 '11 at 11:23

3

var="a:b:c"
OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS=":"
read -a array <<< "$(printf "%s" "$var")"
IFS=$OLDIFS
echo ${#array[@]}
echo ${array[0]}
echo ${array[1]}
echo ${array[2]}

edited Aug 16 '11 at 11:23

glenn jackman

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answered Aug 16 '11 at 10:25

jfg956

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 11 '13 at 07:09

2

echo "a:b:c" | awk -F":" '{print "{"$1",",$2",",$3"}"}'

answered Jan 11 '13 at 07:09

Anton R

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tokenize a string in shellscript

2 Answers2