arraysbashdelimiterifs

Delimiter to split Bash function arguments as an array of strings

For a Bash function my_fun, how can I use a delimiter (e.g. ";") to split input into an array of strings?

Example input:

$ my_fun This is ; an example

Example output:

string1: This is
string2: an example

Perhaps using $IFS=';' or the read command?

Solution

  • No need to loop, no need to read, simply assign an array with IFS set to ;:

    my_fun() { IFS=';' arr=( $@ ); printf '|%s|\n' "${arr[@]}"; }
my_fun "foo ; bar ; baz"
|foo |
| bar |
| baz|

    As noted in comments this may break if the input contains glob patterns (like *): pathname expansion would apply. If this can happen you can enable/disable the noglob option:

    my_fun() { set -f; IFS=';' arr=( $@ ); set +f; printf '|%s|\n' "${arr[@]}"; }