I have a file from which I extract the first three columns using the cut command and write them into an array.
When I check the length of the array , it is giving me four. I need the array to have only 3 elements.
I think it's taking space as the delimiter for array elements.
aaa|111|ADAM|1222|aauu
aaa|222|MIKE ALLEN|5678|gggg
aaa|333|JOE|1222|eeeee
target=($(cut -d '|' -f1-3 sample_file2.txt| sort -u ))
In bash 4 or later, use readarray with process substitution to populate the array. As is, your code cannot distinguish between the whitespace separating each line in the output from the whitespace occurring in "Mike Allen". The readarray command puts each line of the input into a separate array element.
readarray -t target < <(cut -d '|' -f1-3 sample_file2.txt| sort -u)
Prior to bash 4, you need a loop to read each line individually to assign to the array.
while IFS='' read -r line; do
target+=("$line")
done < <(cut -d '|' -f1-3 sample_file2.txt | sort -u)
bash 4 or later. Otherwise, you need to use something a little messier.This should work:
IFS=$'\n' target=($(cut -d '|' -f1-3 sample_file2.txt| sort -u ))
Example:
#!/bin/bash
IFS=$'\n' target=($(cut -d '|' -f1-3 sample_file2.txt| sort -u ))
echo ${#target[@]}
echo "${target[1]}"
Output:
3
aaa|222|MIKE ALLEN
As an alternative, using the infamous eval,
eval target=($(cut -sd '|' -f1-3 sample_file2.txt | sort -u | \
xargs -d\\n printf "'%s'\n"))
