How to convert a string into a BASH array?

Question

Given the following string, produced by jsawk:

[123,456,789]

Is there an idiomatic way of converting this into an array in BASH?

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-09 12:59:52Z

3

Strip the brackets, then use IFS to split on commas before populating the array with read.

foo="[123,456,789]"
IFS=, read -a list <<< "${foo:1:-1}"

This accommodates any comma-separated string.

answered Aug 9, 2012 at 12:54

chepner

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Comments

kev · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-09 12:39:00Z

1

You simply convert punctuations to spaces.

string='[123,456,789]'
array=(${string//[^0-9]/ })

answered Aug 9, 2012 at 12:39

kev

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