bash: read string into array bash with spaces preserved [duplicate]

Question

I have string "hi how are you" I want to put this string into an array as shown below. But i want to preserve spaces. Any ideas on how to do that?

    a[0] a[1] a[2]    3   4 5   6     .... should have
     h    i   <space> h   o w <space> .... and so on.

probably not a duplicate, most answers cannot handle spaces... — Karoly Horvath
– Karoly Horvath, Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 14:54
exactly. I tried to search as much as i could but couldnt find how to handle spaces.; — user2404176
– user2404176, Commented Jun 6, 2013 at 15:15

Birei · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-06 16:35:51Z

3

One way, sure there will be better solutions but this seems to work for me:

unset arr; IFS=; for c in $(sed 's/./&\n/g' <<<"hi how are you"); do arr+=("$c"); done; echo "${arr[@]}"

It yields:

h
i

h
o
w

a
r
e

y
o
u

answered Jun 6, 2013 at 14:57

Birei

36.4k3 gold badges80 silver badges84 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

2 Comments

thank you Birei! I guess i am spoilt for choice ! I appreciate your response sir!

Thank you, your IFS='' trick helped me in my own problem (preserving spaces in an array of filenames)!

Karoly Horvath · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-06 14:53:45Z

1

eval a=( $(echo "hi how are you" | sed "s/\(.\)/'\1' /g") )

It's really ugly, maybe somebody can come up with something without eval...

answered Jun 6, 2013 at 14:53

Karoly Horvath

96.7k11 gold badges123 silver badges181 bronze badges

do you mind explaining the sed part?

run that part alone: echo "hi how are you" | sed "s/\(.\)/'\1' /g". Replaces every character with a quoted one

silly question! should have done that! Thank you Karoly! That works! cheers!

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2013-06-06 15:00:57Z

0

Probably not fast, but avoids the need for sed:

z=()
while read -n 1 x; do
    z+=( "$x" )
done <<<"hi how are you"

answered Jun 6, 2013 at 15:00

chepner

538k77 gold badges594 silver badges746 bronze badges