How to store elements with whitespace in an array? - arrays

Just wondering, assuming I am storing my data in a file called BookDB.txt in the following format :
C++ for dummies:Jared:10.52:5:6
Java for dummies:David:10.65:4:6
whereby each field is seperated by the delimeter ":".
How would I preserve whitespace in the first field and have an array with the following contents : ('C++ for dummies' 'Java for dummies')?
Any help is very much appreciated!

Ploutox's solution is almost correct, but without setting IFS, you will not get the array that you seek, with two elements in this case.
Note: He corrected his solution after this post.
IFS=$'\n': arr=( $(awk -F':' '{print $1 }' Input.txt ) )
echo ${#arr[#]}
echo ${arr[0]}
echo ${arr[1]}
Output:
2
C++ for dummies
Java for dummies

Just use a while loop:
#!/bin/bash
# create and populate the array
a=()
while IFS=':' read -r field _
do
a+=("$field")
done < file
# print the array contents
printf "%s\n" "${a[#]}"

I totally misunderstood your question on my 1st attempt to answer. awk seems more suited for your need though. You can get what you want with simple scripting :
IFS=$'\n' : MYARRAY=($(awk -F ":" '{print $1}' myfile))
the -F flag forces : as the field separator.
echo ${MYARRAY[0]} will print :
C++ for dummies

$ yes sed -i "s/:/\'\'/" BookDB.txt | head -n100 | bash
this command while work. this is a linux command, run it on shell in same path with BookDB.txt

Related

Creating an array of Strings from Grep Command

I'm pretty new to Linux and I've been trying some learning recently. One thing I'm struggling is Within a log file I would like to grep for all the unique IDs that exist and store them in an array.
The format of the ids are like so id=12345678,
I'm struggling though to get these in to an array. So far I've tried a range of things, the below however
a=($ (grep -HR1 `id=^[0-9]' logfile))
echo ${#a[#]}
but the echo count is always returned as 0. So it is clear the populating of the array is not working. Have explored other pages online, but nothing seems to have a clear explanation of what I am looking for exactly.
a=($(grep -Eow 'id=[0-9]+' logfile))
a=("${a[#]#id=}")
printf '%s\n' "${a[#]}"
It's safe to split an unquoted command substitution here, as we aren't printing pathname expansion characters (*?[]), or whitespace (other than the new lines which delimit the list).
If this were not the case, mapfile -t a <(grep ...) is a good alternative.
-E is extended regex (for +)
-o prints only matching text
-w matches a whole word only
${a[#]#id=} strips the id suffix from each array element
Here is an example
my_array=()
while IFS= read -r line; do
my_array+=( "$line" )
done < <( ls )
echo ${#my_array[#]}
printf '%s\n' "${my_array[#]}"
It prints out 14 and then the names of the 14 files in the same folder. Just substitute your command instead of ls and you started.
Suggesting readarray command to make sure it array reads full lines.
readarray -t my_array < <(grep -HR1 'id=^[0-9]' logfile)
printf "%s\n" "${my_array[#]}"

Trouble with AWK'd command output and bash array

I am attempting to get a list of running VirtualBox VMs (the UUIDs) and put them into an array. The command below produces the output below:
$ VBoxManage list runningvms | awk -F '[{}]' '{print $(NF-1)}'
f93c17ca-ab1b-4ba2-95e5-a1b0c8d70d2a
46b285c3-cabd-4fbb-92fe-c7940e0c6a3f
83f4789a-b55b-4a50-a52f-dbd929bdfe12
4d1589ba-9153-489a-947a-df3cf4f81c69
I would like to take those UUIDs and put them into an array (possibly even an associative array for later use, but a simple array for now is sufficient)
If I do the following:
array1="( $(VBoxManage list runningvms | awk -F '[{}]' '{print $(NF-1)}') )"
The commands
array1_len=${#array1[#]}
echo $array1_len
Outputs "1" as in there's only 1 element. If I print out the elements:
echo ${array1[*]}
I get a single line of all the UUIDs
( f93c17ca-ab1b-4ba2-95e5-a1b0c8d70d2a 46b285c3-cabd-4fbb-92fe-c7940e0c6a3f 83f4789a-b55b-4a50-a52f-dbd929bdfe12 4d1589ba-9153-489a-947a-df3cf4f81c69 )
I did some research (Bash Guide/Arrays on how to tackle this and found this with command substitution and redirection, but it produces an empty array
while read -r -d '\0'; do
array2+=("$REPLY")
done < <(VBoxManage list runningvms | awk -F '[{}]' '{print $(NF-1)}')
I'm obviously missing something. I've looked at several simiar questions on this site such as:
Reading output of command into array in Bash
AWK output to bash Array
Creating an Array in Bash with Quoted Entries from Command Output
Unfortunately, none have helped. I would apprecaite any assistance in figuring out how to take the output and assign it to an array.
I am running this on macOS 10.11.6 (El Captain) and BASH version 3.2.57
Since you're on a Mac:
brew install bash
Then with this bash as your shell, pipe the output to:
readarray -t array1
Of the -t option, the man page says:
-t Remove a trailing delim (default newline) from each line read.
If the bash4 solution is admissible, then the advice given
e.g. by gniourf_gniourf at reading-output-of-command-into-array-in-bash
is still sound.

Reading a file into an associative array in Bash

I'm trying to read the information of a structured file into an associative array using Bash script. The file contains in each line the name of a person and its address, separated by a "|". For example:
person1|address of person1
person2|address of person2
...
personN|address of personN
I tried to do this using the script below. Within the WHILE loop, the information is being printed. However, in the FOR loop the information is not being printed. It seems that the information is not being stored in the associative array outside of the WHILE loop.
What am I doing wrong? Why this is not working? Is there more efficient ways to do that?
#!/bin/bash
declare -A address
cat adresses.txt | while read line
do
name=`echo $line | cut -d '|' -f 1`
add=`echo $line | cut -d '|' -f 2`
address[$name]=$add
echo "$name - ${address[$name]}"
done
for name in ${!address[*]}
do
echo "$name - ${address[$name]}"
done
Wrong and useless usage of cut
#!/bin/bash
declare -A address
while IFS=\| read name add
do
address[$name]=$add
done < adresses.txt
for name in ${!address[*]}
do
echo "$name - ${address[$name]}"
done
cat addresses.txt | while read line
do
...
done
Shell commands in a pipelines are executed in subshells. Variables set in subshells aren't visible the parent shell.
You can fix this by replacing the pipelines with a redirection.
while read line
do
...
done < addresses.txt
Extending the accepted answer to resolve the OP's comment:
#!/bin/bash
declare -A address
while IFS='|' read name add
do
address[$name]=$add
echo "$name - ${address[$name]}"
done < adresses.txt
for name in "${!address[#]}"
do
echo "$name - ${address[$name]}"
done

How to write an array ignoring space characters in shell scripting?

I have a text file which consists of say ..following information say test.text:
an
apple of
one's eye
I want to read these lines in an array using shell scripting by doing a cat test.text. I have tried using a=(`cat test.text`), but that doesn't work as it considers space as a delimiter. I need the values as a[0]=an , a[1]=apple of , a[2]=one's eye. I don't want to use IFS. Need help, thanks in advance..!!
In bash 4 or later
readarray a < test.text
This will include an empty element for each blank line, so you might want to remove the empty lines from the input file first.
In earlier versions, you'll need to build the array manually.
a=()
while read; do a+=("$REPLY"); done < test.text
One of various options you have is to use read with bash. Set IFS to the newline and line separator to NUL
IFS=$'\n' read -d $'\0' -a a < test.txt
Plain sh
IFS='
'
set -- $(< test.txt)
unset IFS
echo "$1"
echo "$2"
echo "$#"
bash
IFS=$'\n' a=($(< test.txt))
echo "${a[0]}"
echo "${a[1]}"
echo "${a[#]}"
I'm inclined to say these are the best of the available solutions because they do not involve looping.
Let's say:
cat file
an
apple of
one's eye
Use this while loop:
arr=()
while read -r l; do
[[ -n "$l" ]] && arr+=("$l")
done < file
TEST
set | grep arr
arr=([0]="an" [1]="apple of" [2]="one's eye")

Read lines from a file into a Bash array [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Creating an array from a text file in Bash
(7 answers)
Closed 7 years ago.
I am trying to read a file containing lines into a Bash array.
I have tried the following so far:
Attempt1
a=( $( cat /path/to/filename ) )
Attempt2
index=0
while read line ; do
MYARRAY[$index]="$line"
index=$(($index+1))
done < /path/to/filename
Both attempts only return a one element array containing the first line of the file. What am I doing wrong?
I am running bash 4.1.5
The readarray command (also spelled mapfile) was introduced in bash 4.0.
readarray -t a < /path/to/filename
Latest revision based on comment from BinaryZebra's comment
and tested here. The addition of command eval allows for the expression to be kept in the present execution environment while the expressions before are only held for the duration of the eval.
Use $IFS that has no spaces\tabs, just newlines/CR
$ IFS=$'\r\n' GLOBIGNORE='*' command eval 'XYZ=($(cat /etc/passwd))'
$ echo "${XYZ[5]}"
sync:x:5:0:sync:/sbin:/bin/sync
Also note that you may be setting the array just fine but reading it wrong - be sure to use both double-quotes "" and braces {} as in the example above
Edit:
Please note the many warnings about my answer in comments about possible glob expansion, specifically gniourf-gniourf's comments about my prior attempts to work around
With all those warnings in mind I'm still leaving this answer here (yes, bash 4 has been out for many years but I recall that some macs only 2/3 years old have pre-4 as default shell)
Other notes:
Can also follow drizzt's suggestion below and replace a forked subshell+cat with
$(</etc/passwd)
The other option I sometimes use is just set IFS into XIFS, then restore after. See also Sorpigal's answer which does not need to bother with this
The simplest way to read each line of a file into a bash array is this:
IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -r -a lines < /etc/passwd
Now just index in to the array lines to retrieve each line, e.g.
printf "line 1: %s\n" "${lines[0]}"
printf "line 5: %s\n" "${lines[4]}"
# all lines
echo "${lines[#]}"
One alternate way if file contains strings without spaces with 1string each line:
fileItemString=$(cat filename |tr "\n" " ")
fileItemArray=($fileItemString)
Check:
Print whole Array:
${fileItemArray[*]}
Length=${#fileItemArray[#]}
Your first attempt was close. Here is the simplistic approach using your idea.
file="somefileondisk"
lines=`cat $file`
for line in $lines; do
echo "$line"
done
#!/bin/bash
IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -r -a inlines < testinput
IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -r -a outlines < testoutput
counter=0
cat testinput | while read line;
do
echo "$((${inlines[$counter]}-${outlines[$counter]}))"
counter=$(($counter+1))
done
# OR Do like this
counter=0
readarray a < testinput
readarray b < testoutput
cat testinput | while read myline;
do
echo value is: $((${a[$counter]}-${b[$counter]}))
counter=$(($counter+1))
done

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