Creating an array from substrings in Bash not working [duplicate]

Question

Why are the last two array elements being truncated?

I'm trying to generate an array from a string in bash, using a \n as the delaminating character. Using command substitution and tr I was close to what I wanted, now I'm getting strange output.

Script file below

input string: abcd\nefgh\nijkl\nmnop

#!/bin/bash
oper () {
        local fct=$1
        local s=$2
        IFS='\n' read -ra sArr <<< "$s"
        for item in ${sArr[@]}
        do
                printf "   %s\n" $(echo $item | rev)
        done
}
echo "original string: $2"
oper $1 $2
printf "mirror string: "
exit 0

Here's the output

original string: abcd\nefgh\nijkl\nmnop
   dcba
   hgfe
   lkji
   m
   po

"delaminating" - it's usually called a delimiter.

KamilCuk
– KamilCuk

2020-10-28 21:39:25 +00:00
Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 21:39 — KamilCuk
– KamilCuk, Commented Oct 28, 2020 at 21:39

KamilCuk · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-28 21:41:18Z

0

Why are the last two array elements being truncated?

Because any character in IFS causes splitting into words, not both. Seeting IFS='\n' splits the input string on \ or n. Because mnop has an n in it, it is splitted to m and op.

First change the sequence of \n character to something that is a single character and uniq - then you may use IFS=.. read. For example:

IFS='!' read -r -a sarr < <(sed 's/\\n/!/g' <<<"$s")

Remember to check you script with http://shellcheck.net to correct quoting problems.

answered Oct 28, 2020 at 21:41

KamilCuk

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