Shell Script regex matches to array and process each array element - arrays

Question

While I've handled this task in other languages easily, I'm at a loss for which commands to use when Shell Scripting (CentOS/BASH)
I have some regex that provides many matches in a file I've read to a variable, and would like to take the regex matches to an array to loop over and process each entry.
Regex I typically use https://regexr.com/ to form my capture groups, and throw that to JS/Python/Go to get an array and loop - but in Shell Scripting, not sure what I can use.
So far I've played with "sed" to find all matches and replace, but don't know if it's capable of returning an array to loop from matches.
Take regex, run on file, get array back. I would love some help with Shell Scripting for this task.
EDIT:
Based on comments, put this together (not working via shellcheck.net):
#!/bin/sh
examplefile="
asset('1a/1b/1c.ext')
asset('2a/2b/2c.ext')
asset('3a/3b/3c.ext')
"
examplearr=($(sed 'asset\((.*)\)' $examplefile))
for el in ${!examplearr[*]}
do
echo "${examplearr[$el]}"
done

Answer 1

This works in bash on a mac:
#!/bin/sh
examplefile="
asset('1a/1b/1c.ext')
asset('2a/2b/2c.ext')
asset('3a/3b/3c.ext')
"
examplearr=(`echo "$examplefile" | sed -e '/.*/s/asset(\(.*\))/\1/'`)
for el in ${examplearr[*]}; do
echo "$el"
done
output:
'1a/1b/1c.ext'
'2a/2b/2c.ext'
'3a/3b/3c.ext'
Note the wrapping of $examplefile in quotes, and the use of sed to replace the entire line with the match. If there will be other content in the file, either on the same lines as the "asset" string or in other lines with no assets at all you can refine it like this:
#!/bin/sh
examplefile="
fooasset('1a/1b/1c.ext')
asset('2a/2b/2c.ext')bar
foobar
fooasset('3a/3b/3c.ext')bar
"
examplearr=(`echo "$examplefile" | grep asset | sed -e '/.*/s/^.*asset(\(.*\)).*$/\1/'`)
for el in ${examplearr[*]}; do
echo "$el"
done
and achieve the same result.

Answer 2

There are several ways to do this. I'd do with GNU grep with perl-compatible regex (ah, delightful line noise):
mapfile -t examplearr < <(grep -oP '(?<=[(]).*?(?=[)])' <<<"$examplefile")
for i in "${!examplearr[#]}"; do printf "%d\t%s\n" $i "${examplearr[i]}"; done
0 '1a/1b/1c.ext'
1 '2a/2b/2c.ext'
2 '3a/3b/3c.ext'
This uses the bash mapfile command to read lines from stdin and assign them to an array.
The bits you're missing from the sed command:
$examplefile is text, not a filename, so you have to send to to sed's stdin
sed's a funny little language with 1-character commands: you've given it the "a" command, which is inappropriate in this case.
you only want to output the captured parts of the matches, not every line, so you need the -n option, and you need to print somewhere: the p flag in s///p means "print the [line] if a substitution was made".
sed -n 's/asset\(([^)]*)\)/\1/p' <<<"$examplefile"
# or
echo "$examplefile" | sed -n 's/asset\(([^)]*)\)/\1/p'
Note that this returns values like ('1a/1b/1c.ext') -- with the parentheses. If you don't want them, add the -r or -E option to sed: among other things, that flips the meaning of ( and \(