How to split a line into words separated by one or more spaces in bash

Question

I realize how to do it in python  just with   line   db file readline   ll string split line    but how can I do the same in bash  is it really possible to do it in a so simple way

User · Answer

The -a option of read will allow you to split a line read in by the characters contained in  IFS

User · Answer

If you already have your line of text in a variable  LINE  then you should be able to say  for L in  LINE  do    echo  L  done

User · Answer

If you want a specific word from the line  awk might be useful  e g      echo  LINE   awk   print  2     Prints the second whitespace separated word in  LINE  You can also split on other characters  e g      echo  5 6 7    awk -F    print  2   6

User · Answer

It depends upon what you mean by split   If you want to iterate over words in a line  which is in a variable  you can just iterate   For example  let s say the variable line is this is a line   Then you can do this   for word in  line  do echo  word  done   This will print   this is a line   for    in  var splits  var using the values in  IFS  the default value of which means  split blanks and newlines    If you want to read lines from user or a file  you can do something like   cat  filename   while read line do     echo  Processing new line   gt  dev tty     for word in  line     do         echo  word     done done   For anything else  you need to be more explicit and define your question in more detail   Note  Edited to remove bashism  but I still kept cat  filename       because I like it more than redirection

User · Answer

More simple   echo  line   sed  s  s  n g        s --  whitespace character  space  tab  NL  FF  VT  CR   In many   systems also valid   space         n --  new line

User · Answer

s  foo bar baz  a    s   echo   a 0   echo   a 1

User · Answer

do this  while read -r line do   set --  line   echo   1  2  done  lt  file     1   2 etc will be your 1st and 2nd splitted  fields   use    to get all values  use    to get length of the  fields

User · Answer

echo  line   tr       n    gives the output similar to those of most of the answers above  without using loops   In your case  you also mention ll  lt    output    gt   so   given that I don t know much python and assuming you need to assign output to a variable    ll  echo  line   tr       n     should suffice  remember to echo   ll  instead of echo  ll

User · Answer

line  these are words    ll   line    declare -p ll    dump the array declare -a ll    0   these   1   are   2   words      for w in   ll      do echo  w  done these are words

[bash] How to split a line into words separated by one or more spaces in bash?

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