In bourne shell I have the following:
VALUES=`some command that returns multiple line values`
echo $VALUES
Looks like:
"ONE"
"TWO"
"THREE"
"FOUR"
I would like it to look like:
"ONE" "TWO" "THREE" "FOUR"
Can anyone help?
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Do you want an array of 4 strings, or do you want the single string "ONE TWO THREE FOUR"?William Pursell– William Pursell2010-01-20 16:36:24 +00:00Commented Jan 20, 2010 at 16:36
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nit: The command in backticks (why not use $() instead?) does not 'return' multiple values. It outputs multiple lines, and returns a single value, hopefully zero.William Pursell– William Pursell2010-01-20 16:37:40 +00:00Commented Jan 20, 2010 at 16:37
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William, very simplified version. I actually take the output of the backticks, do some parse work on the data in VALUES than output VALUES later.Chris Kannon– Chris Kannon2010-01-20 16:39:41 +00:00Commented Jan 20, 2010 at 16:39
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4 Answers
echo $VALUES | tr '\n' ' '
3 Comments
liwp
Nice. Just a tweak: in bash and zsh at least you can pipe in the env var without echo with <<<, i.e. tr '\n' ' ' <<< $VALUES.
mko
@liwp +1 for the nice tip. BTW how to pass escaped string using
<<< i.e. tr -d '\n' <<< "a line with line feed \n". the string doesn't escape '\n' in the double quote as I expected, any idea?
Jaime Hablutzel
If you don't want the spaces you can do
echo $VALUES | tr -d '\n', the result would be ONETWOTHREEFOURAnother method, if you want to not just print out your code but assign it to a variable, and not have a spurious space at the end:
$ var=$(tail -1 /etc/passwd; tail -1 /etc/passwd)
$ echo "$var"
apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin
apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin
$ var=$(echo $var)
$ echo "$var"
apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin apache:x:48:48:Apache:/var/www:/sbin/nologin
Comments
The accepted solution didn't work for me (on OS X Yosemite). This is what I used:
echo -n $VALUES
answered Nov 10, 2014 at 12:06
José Manuel Sánchez
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Comments
Another option is using xargs (which keeps a final newline though - instead of a possible trailing space using tr):
echo $VALUES | xargs
printf '%s\n' 1 2 3 4 5 | xargs
@yozloy: how to pass escaped string using <<<
tr -d '\n' <<< "`printf '%b' 'a line with line feed \n'`"
