In a bash script I want to loop over values I have stored in a csv file. How can I import a column from a csv file into a bash script and then do something like:
for i in {column imported from csv}
do
mkdir "$i"
done
my csv file looks like this:
1, 3, 8
4, 6, 10
123, 6, 8
324, 9, 12
how do I import the first column to get:
for i in {1, 4, 123, 324}
You don't even need to loop, just use cut with xargs:
cut -d, -f1 file | xargs mkdir
To get the first column using a for loop:
while IFS=, read -ra arr; do
echo "processing ${arr[0]}"
done < file
processing 1
processing 4
processing 123
processing 324
Change echo to whatever command you want to use inside the loop.
$ for i in $(cut -d, -f1 file); do mkdir "$i"; ... ; done
or replace cut with awk
$ for i in $(awk -F, '{print $1}' file); do mkdir "$i"; ... ; done
