Reading input fields separated by spaces

Question

How can I read in POSIX bash input like this:

<name>,<tag1> <tag2> <tag3>…

I tried while read line;do done but this wants newlines, all I have is spaces.

(Is IFS solution? If yes, how? (I don't fully understand IFS.))

If it wants newlines where you have spaces, translate spaces to newlines. (tr ' ' '\n') — Petr Skocik
– Petr Skocik, Commented May 17, 2015 at 18:42
Are you looking for something like this: echo '<name>,<tag1> <tag2> <tag3>' | tr ", " "\n"? — Cyrus
– Cyrus, Commented May 17, 2015 at 18:54

Cyrus · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-17 18:49:17Z

3

Use an array:

echo '<name>,<tag1> <tag2> <tag3>' | while IFS=" ," read -a foo; do echo ${foo[@]}; done

Output:

<name> <tag1> <tag2> <tag3>

From man bash:

IFS: The Internal Field Separator that is used for word splitting after expansion and to split lines into words with the read builtin command.

answered May 17, 2015 at 18:49

Cyrus

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