I am reading in filetype data into a bash array and need to print its contents out on the same line with spaces.
#!/bin/bash
filename=$1
declare -a myArray
readarray myArray < $1
echo "${myArray[@]}"
I try this and even with the echo -n flag it still prints on newlines, what am I missing, would printf work better?
readarray
retains the trailing newline in each array element. To strip them, use the -t
option.
readarray -t myArray < "$1"
Simple way to print in one line
echo "${myArray[*]}"
example:
myArray=(
one
two
three
four
[5]=five
)
echo "${myArray[*]}"
#Result
one two three four five
One way :
printf '%s\n' "${myArray[@]}" | paste -sd ' '
or simply :
printf '%s ' "${myArray[*]}"
My favourite trick is
echo $(echo "${myArray[@]}")
In case you have the array elements coming from input, this is how you can
- create an array
- add elements to it
- then print the array in a single line
The script:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
declare -a array
var=0
while read line
do
array[var]=$line
var=$((var+1))
done
# At this point, the user would enter text. EOF by itself ends entry.
echo ${array[@]}
@sorontar's solution posted in a comment was handy:
printf '%s ' "${myArray[@]}"
but in some places the leading space was unacceptable so I implemented this
local str
printf -v str ' %s' "${myArray[@]}" # save to variable str without printing
printf '%s' "${str:1}" # to remove the leading space