How to split one string into multiple variables in

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• How do I split a string on a delimiter in Bash? 33 answers

I've been looking for a solution and found similar questions, only they were attempting to split sentences with spaces between them, and the answers do not work for my situation.

Currently a variable is being set to something a string like this:
ABCDE-123456
and I would like to split that into 2 variables, while eliminating the "-". i.e.:
var1=ABCDE
var2=123456

How is it possible to accomplish this?

---

This is the solution that worked for me:
var1=$(echo $STR | cut -f1 -d-)
var2=$(echo $STR | cut -f2 -d-)

Is it possible to use the cut command that will work without a delimiter (each character gets set as a variable)?

var1=$(echo $STR | cut -f1 -d?)
var2=$(echo $STR | cut -f1 -d?)
var3=$(echo $STR | cut -f1 -d?)
etc.

Answer 1

string="ABCDE-123456"
IFS=- # use "local IFS=-" inside the function
set $string
echo $1 # >>> ABCDE
echo $2 # >>> 123456

Answer 2

If you know it's going to be just two fields, you can skip the extra subprocesses like this:

var1=${STR%-*}
var2=${STR#*-}

What does this do? ${STR%-*} deletes the shortest substring of $STR that matches the pattern -* starting from the end of the string. ${STR#*-} does the same, but with the *- pattern and starting from the beginning of the string. They each have counterparts %% and ## which find the longest anchored pattern match. If anyone has a helpful mnemonic to remember which does which, let me know! I always have to try both to remember.

Answer 3

read with IFS are perfect for this:

$ IFS=- read var1 var2 <<< ABCDE-123456
$ echo "$var1"
ABCDE
$ echo "$var2"
123456

Edit:

Here is how you can read each individual character into array elements:

$ read -a foo <<<"$(echo "ABCDE-123456" | sed 's/./& /g')"

Dump the array:

$ declare -p foo
declare -a foo='([0]="A" [1]="B" [2]="C" [3]="D" [4]="E" [5]="-" [6]="1" [7]="2" [8]="3" [9]="4" [10]="5" [11]="6")'

If there are spaces in the string:

$ IFS=$'\v' read -a foo <<<"$(echo "ABCDE 123456" | sed 's/./&\v/g')"
$ declare -p foo
declare -a foo='([0]="A" [1]="B" [2]="C" [3]="D" [4]="E" [5]=" " [6]="1" [7]="2" [8]="3" [9]="4" [10]="5" [11]="6")'

Answer 4

Using bash regex capabilities:

re="^([^-]+)-(.*)$"
[[ "ABCDE-123456" =~ $re ]] && var1="${BASH_REMATCH[1]}" && var2="${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
echo $var1
echo $var2

OUTPUT

ABCDE
123456

Answer 5

Sounds like a job for set with a custom IFS.

IFS=-
set $STR
var1=$1
var2=$2

(You will want to do this in a function with a local IFS so you don't mess up other parts of your script where you require IFS to be what you expect.)

Answer 6

If your solution doesn't have to be general, i.e. only needs to work for strings like your example, you could do:

var1=$(echo $STR | cut -f1 -d-)
var2=$(echo $STR | cut -f2 -d-)

I chose cut here because you could simply extend the code for a few more variables...