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up vote 4 down vote favorite

I want to split 'hello' into h e l l o in an array using only bash, I could do it in sed with sed 's/./& /g' but I want to know how to split a string into an array in Bash when I do not know what the delimiter would be, or the delimiter is any single character. I don't think I can use ${i// /} without some creativity because the delimiter is an unknown, and I don't think that expression accepts regex. I tried using BASH_REMATCH with [[ string =~ ([a-z].).* ]] but it doesn't work as I expected. What is the proper way to use only bash to accomplish a string.split() type of behavior? The reason is that I am trying to write the rev utility in all bash:

  while read data; do
  word=($(echo $data|tr ' ' '_'|sed 's/./& /g'))
  new=()
  i=$((${#word[@]} - 1))
  while [[ $i -ge 0 ]]; do
    new+=(${word[$i]})
    (( i-- ))
  done
  echo ${new[@]}|tr -d ' '|tr '_' ' '
  done

But I used tr and sed, I want to know how to do the split properly and then I will fix it to be all bash. Just for fun.

share|improve this question
    
There must be cross-site duplicates on Stack Overflow, given the size of it. One candidate is Bash: Split string into character array. –  Peter Mortensen Apr 19 at 22:34

4 Answers 4

up vote 5 down vote accepted 
s="hello"
declare -a a
for ((i=0; i<${#s}; i++)); do a[$i]="${s:$i:1}"; done
declare -p a

Output:

declare -a a='([0]="h" [1]="e" [2]="l" [3]="l" [4]="o")'

or

s="hello"
while read -n 1 c; do a+=($c); done  <<< "$s"
declare -p a

Output:

declare -a a='([0]="h" [1]="e" [2]="l" [3]="l" [4]="o")'
share|improve this answer
    
The second one is nice but it only works (in this case) because you don't quote "$c", so it will drop whitespace and expand stars in $s. –  rici Apr 20 at 3:14
    
This: for ((i=0; i<${#s}; i++)); do a[i]="${s:i:1}"; done also work, The $ are not needed inside arithmetic evaluation (which in the index [ ] and in the : : are). –  BinaryZebra Aug 16 at 23:01
    
The second option should be: while read -N 1 c; do a+=("$c"); done <<< "$s". The -N allows to read even newlines, and the quotes ("$c") avoid pathname expansion (and some other issues). –  BinaryZebra Aug 16 at 23:05
    
Of course, if the last newline must be corrected, change the line given to: while read -N 1 c; do a+=("$c"); done <<< "$s"x and then erase the last newline and the x added: unset a[${#a[@]}-1]; unset a[${#a[@]}-1]. –  BinaryZebra Aug 16 at 23:20
up vote 2 down vote

To split string into array of characters, with null delimiter, you can:

str='hello'
arr=()
i=0
while [ "$i" -lt "${#str}" ]; do
  arr+=("${str:$i:1}")
  i=$((i+1))
done

printf '%s\n' "${arr[@]}"

With delimiter other than null, you can:

set -f
str='1,2,3,4,5'
IFS=',' arr=($str)
printf '%s\n' "${arr[@]}"
share|improve this answer
    
If IFS can be set, then you can just do: IFS=',' arr=($str). –  muru Apr 19 at 16:46
2  
@muru: You will be stucked with glob in that case. Updated with disabling glob. –  cuonglm Apr 19 at 16:50
    
The first option breaks on *. Try str='he*llo'. Solved by doing: arr+=("${str:$i:1}"). The second option breaks if $str contains newlines. –  BinaryZebra Aug 16 at 18:52
    
@BinaryZebra: Ah, yes, my bad, missing quote. Fixed it, thanks. –  cuonglm Aug 17 at 1:35
up vote 1 down vote

Just for fun (and other shells) other variant:

word=hello
unset letter
while [ ${#word} -gt 0 ]
do
    rest=${word#?}
    letter[${#letter[*]}]=${word%$rest}
    word=$rest
done

And check

for l in "${!letter[@]}"
do
    echo "letter [$l] = ${letter[l]}"
done

will print

letter [0] = h
letter [1] = e
letter [2] = l
letter [3] = l
letter [4] = o
share|improve this answer
up vote 0 down vote

Method 1:

Oneliner:

s="hello"
for ((i=0;i<${#s};i++)); do result[$i]="${s:i:1}"; done
echo ${result[@]}

Expanded code:

s="hello"                   # Original string.

for ((i=0;i<${#s};i++)); do # For i=0; i<(length of s); i++
    result[$i]="${s:i:1}"       # result[i] is equal to the i th character of $s
done                        # End of the loop

echo ${result[@]} # Print all elements of $result.

Method 2:

Oneliner:

s="hello"
var=($(while read -n 1; do printf "$REPLY "; done <<< "$s"))
echo "${var[@]}"

Expanded code:

s="hello" # Original string.

while read -n 1; do # Read chraracter by character the string.
    space_separated=$(printf "$space_separated $REPLY") # $space_separated is equal to it plus the current character.
done <<< "$s" # Pass the string to the loop

result=($space_separated) # Split $space_separated into an array.

echo "${result[@]}" # Print all elements of $result.

Thanks to @cuonglm by it's suggestion.
Effectively, you can use $REPLY that is the default varible where read reads the input.

share|improve this answer
1  
You can use $REPLY instead of char variable. –  cuonglm Apr 19 at 17:01
    
@cuonglm: Thanks! –  Helio Apr 19 at 17:17

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