Bash script loop through an array of numbers with delimiters comma + space

Question

I wanna loop through the array and print out each element in a bash script:

array=(10, 0.2, 0.03,)
for ele in ${array[@]}
do
echo "$ele blah" 
done

However, it spits out:

10, blah
 blah
0.2, blah
 blah
0.03 blah

Even if I added

IFS=","

The result is :

10 blah
 blah
0.2 blah
 blah
0.03 blah

How can I get:

10 blah
0.2 blah
0.03 blah

After this, I would like to align each line like:

10.00      blah
0.200      blah
0.030      blah

Updated:

With the 1st and 2nd column separated by 6 spaces

Is there any easy way to do this? Thanks.

@jenesaisquoi this will cause 10 to stretch out by one compared to 0.2 and 0.03 — James LT
– James LT, Commented Jan 25, 2017 at 1:53

Fred · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-25 02:50:24Z

3

Remove the commas in your array declaration.

array=(10 0.2 0.03)

You also may want to double your expansion in the for loop, unless you are 100% sure there is no chance that word splitting will cause problems (note that in the case of your sample data it won't).

for ele in "${array[@]}"

To format the output, try (instead of echo)

printf "%06.3f      blah\n" "$ele"

You need to increase the number following the % sign if you need more digits before the decimal separator, and you remove the 0 to avoid printing leading zeros if you do not want them. For instance :

printf "%10.3f      blah\n" "$ele"

edited Jan 25, 2017 at 2:50

answered Jan 25, 2017 at 1:37

Fred

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1 Comment

Fred Over a year ago

I added an explanation for that at the end of my answer.

Guilherme Sena · Accepted Answer · 2017-01-25 01:56:48Z

0

You can remove the commas doing:

for ele in `echo ${array[@]} | sed 's/,//g'`;

Instead of

for ele in ${array[@]}

sed is a very useful tool for doing small manipulations in texts such as replacements with the "s" function. Definitely worth playing around with :)

For the alignment you can use tabs instead of space and printf instead of echo. So use:

printf "%-10.3fblah\n" $ele

instead of

echo "$ele blah"

edited Jan 25, 2017 at 1:56

answered Jan 25, 2017 at 1:39

Guilherme Sena

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2 Comments

Fred Over a year ago

Do you think the OP needs to use a separate command to remove commas instead of simply not using them in the first place?

James LT Over a year ago

this will cause 10 to stretch out by one compared to 0.2 and 0.03

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