How to Split a String in Bash?

You are here because you are writing a script in which you need to split a string, probably stored in a variable, and get at least two strings out of it.

Before I tell you how it works, know that the result will be an array that contains split strings. :)

With that, let's take a look at an example!

#!/usr/bin/env bash

my_string='Hello world'
IFS=' '

read -ra my_array <<< "${my_string}"

for substring in "${my_array[@]}"; do
    echo "${substring}"
done

Assuming that the input string is Hello world, upon executing this script, you will get the following output.

Hello
world

With that overview, let's take a look at what is happening.

Understanding how the string splitting worked

Let's take a look at a different but very similar script to understand what is happening.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

my_string='i,am,one,line,from,a,csv,file'
IFS=','

read -ra my_array <<< "${my_string}"

for substring in "${my_array[@]}"; do
    echo "${substring}"
done

Here, I have taken the string i,am,one,line,from,a,csv,file as the one I want to split.

The variable IFS, is a special bash variable. It stands for Internal Field Separator. This variable holds what you would otherwise call a delimiter. Since I want to cause a split where a comma occurs, that is what I have assigned to the IFS variable.

Now, about the actual splitting. That is done by the Bash built-in command: read. Here, the -a option is telling the read command to store each word (that was split off) into a separate index in an array. The -r option is optional but we use it to prevent escaping any characters that are preceded by a slash.

The my_array is the array in which read will store the words that are split. And doing a read <<< "${my_string}" is the equivalent of doing echo "${my_string}" | read. Since it is shorter, that is what I use.

Finally, I have a for loop at the end that iterates over all indices of the array my_array and prints it to the console one by one.

Conclusion

Bash allows you basic string manipulation. Splitting is not that straightforward, though.

Bash Basics Series #6: Handling String Operations

In this chapter of the Bash Basics series, learn to perform various common string operations like extracting, replacing and deleting substrings.

It's FOSSAbhishek Prakash

This concludes the method of string splitting in Bash using the read command. It is quite easy, but nonetheless, if you find any difficulties, please feel free to ask me in the comments! :)