How to split a delimited string into an array in awk

Question

How to split the string when it contains pipe symbols   in it  I want to split them to be in array   I tried  echo  12 23 11    awk   split  0 a       print a 3  a 2  a 1      Which works fine  If my string is like  12 23 11  then how do I split them into an array

User · Accepted Answer

Have you tried   echo  12 23 11    awk   split  0 a       print a 3  a 2  a 1

User · Answer

Actually awk has a feature called  Input Field Separator Variable  link  This is how to use it  It s not really an array  but it uses the internal   variables  For splitting a simple string it is easier    echo  12 23 11    awk  BEGIN  FS         print  1   2   3

User · Answer

Please be more specific  What do you mean by  it doesn t work   Post the exact output  or error message   your OS and awk version     awk -F        for  i   0    i  lt   NF       print i   i       lt  lt  lt  12 23 11  1 12 2 23 3 11   Or  using split     awk      n   split  0  t         for  i   0    i  lt   n       print i  t i        lt  lt  lt  12 23 11  1 12 2 23 3 11   Edit  on Solaris you ll need to use the POSIX awk   usr xpg4 bin awk  in order to process 4000 fields correctly

User · Answer

I do not like the echo         awk     solution as it calls unnecessary fork and execsystem calls   I prefer a Dimitre s solution with a little twist  awk -F     print  3  2  1    lt  lt  lt  12 23 11    Or a bit shorter version   awk -F     0  3  2  1   lt  lt  lt  12 23 11    In this case the output record put together which is a true condition  so it gets printed   In this specific case the stdin redirection can be spared with setting an awk internal variable   awk -v T  12 23 11   BEGIN split T a      print a 3  a 2  a 1      I used ksh quite a while  but in bash this could be managed by internal string manipulation  In the first case the original string is split by internal terminator  In the second case it is assumed that the string always contains digit pairs separated by a one character separator   T  12 23 11  echo -n   T      T   T     echo   T      T     T  12 23 11  echo   T 6   T 3 2   T 0 2    The result in all cases is  112312

User · Answer

To split a string to an array in awk we use the function split     awk   split  0  a   quot   quot                                                             string      delimiter                                     array to store the pieces   If no separator is given  it uses the FS  which defaults to the space    awk   split  0  a   print a 2     lt  lt  lt   quot a b c d e quot  c d  We can give a separator  for example      awk   split  0  a   quot   quot    print a 2     lt  lt  lt   quot a b c d e quot  b c  Which is equivalent to setting it through the FS    awk -F    split  0  a   print a 1     lt  lt  lt   quot a b c d e quot  b c  In gawk you can also provide the separator as a regexp    awk   split  0  a   quot    quot    print a 2     lt  lt  lt   quot a   b c  d e quot   note multiple   b c  And even see what the delimiter was on every step by using its fourth parameter    awk   split  0  a   quot    quot   sep   print a 2   print sep 1     lt  lt  lt   quot a   b c  d e quot  b c      Let s quote the man page of GNU awk   split string  array    fieldsep    seps      Divide string into pieces separated by fieldsep and store the pieces in array and the separator strings in the seps array  The first piece is stored in array 1   the second piece in array 2   and so forth  The string value of the third argument  fieldsep  is a regexp describing where to split string  much as FS can be a regexp describing where to split input records   If fieldsep is omitted  the value of FS is used  split   returns the number of elements created  seps is a gawk extension  with seps i  being the separator string between array i  and array i 1   If fieldsep is a single space  then any leading whitespace goes into seps 0  and any trailing whitespace goes into seps n   where n is the return value of split    i e   the number of elements in array

User · Answer

I know this is kind of old question  but I thought maybe someone like my trick  Especially since this solution not limited to a specific number of items     Convert to an array  ITEMS    echo  12 23 11    tr       n       Output array items for  ITEM in     ITEMS       do   echo  Item     ITEM   done   The output will be   Item  12 Item  23 Item  11

User · Answer

Joke      How about echo  12 23 11    awk   split  0 a       print a 3  a 2  a 1     This is my output   p2 gt  echo  12 23 11    awk   split  0 a       print a 3  a 2  a 1    112312   so I guess it s working after all

User · Answer

echo  12 23 11    awk   split  0 a       print a 3  a 2  a 1      should work

User · Answer

echo  12 23 11    awk   split  0 a       print a 3  a 2  a 1

[string] How to split a delimited string into an array in awk?

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