How to read a columns from text file and store it in array? Bash

Question

In text file every line include some number of words. It looks like

split time not big
every cash flu green big
numer note word
swing crash car out fly sweet

How to split those lines and store it in array? I need to do with array something like this

for i in $file

do
echo "$array[0]"
echo "$array[2]"
done

Can anyone help?

Do you want to store the lines of a file in an array? Or do you have a single line that you want to split into words? It's not clear what you're asking. — melpomene
– melpomene, Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 14:01
I want to split words to array from every line. Need something like this for every_line_in File ; do item1=$array_form_line_0[0] item2=$array_form_line_0[3] done — mia102aim
– mia102aim, Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 14:05
Do you want the line in an array, or just in item1 and item2? — Jack
– Jack, Commented Nov 7, 2017 at 14:11

oliv · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-07 14:04:22Z

3

You can read the file line by line with read and assign the line to an array. It's rather fragile and might break depending on the file content.

while read line; do 
   array=( $line )
   echo "${array[0]}"
   echo "${array[2]}"
done < file

A better way to parse text file is to use awk:

awk '{print $1; print $3}' file

answered Nov 7, 2017 at 14:04

oliv

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Comments

melpomene · Accepted Answer · 2017-11-07 14:11:34Z

1

I don't see why you need an array, then. You could just do this:

while IFS= read -r line; do
    read -r item1 item2 item3 <<< "$line"
    printf '%s\n%s\n' "$item1" "$item3"
done < "$file"

But if you want to, you can make read give you an array, too:

    read -ra array <<< "$line"
    printf '%s\n%s\n' "${array[0]}" "${array[2]}"

answered Nov 7, 2017 at 14:11

melpomene

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