[bash] How to split one string into multiple strings separated by at least one space in bash shell?

I have a string containing many words with at least one space between each two. How can I split the string into individual words so I can loop through them?

The string is passed as an argument. E.g. ${2} == "cat cat file". How can I loop through it?

Also, how can I check if a string contains spaces?

Probably the easiest and most secure way in BASH 3 and above is:

var="string    to  split"
read -ra arr <<<"$var"

(where arr is the array which takes the split parts of the string) or, if there might be newlines in the input and you want more than just the first line:

var="string    to  split"
read -ra arr -d '' <<<"$var"

(please note the space in -d ''; it cannot be omitted), but this might give you an unexpected newline from <<<"$var" (as this implicitly adds an LF at the end).

Example:

touch NOPE
var="* a  *"
read -ra arr <<<"$var"
for a in "${arr[@]}"; do echo "[$a]"; done

Outputs the expected

[*]
[a]
[*]

as this solution (in contrast to all previous solutions here) is not prone to unexpected and often uncontrollable shell globbing.

Also this gives you the full power of IFS as you probably want:

Example:

IFS=: read -ra arr < <(grep "^$USER:" /etc/passwd)
for a in "${arr[@]}"; do echo "[$a]"; done

Outputs something like:

[tino]
[x]
[1000]
[1000]
[Valentin Hilbig]
[/home/tino]
[/bin/bash]

As you can see, spaces can be preserved this way, too:

IFS=: read -ra arr <<<' split  :   this    '
for a in "${arr[@]}"; do echo "[$a]"; done

outputs

[ split  ]
[   this    ]

Please note that the handling of IFS in BASH is a subject on its own, so do your tests; some interesting topics on this:

• unset IFS: Ignores runs of SPC, TAB, NL and on line starts and ends
• IFS='': No field separation, just reads everything
• IFS=' ': Runs of SPC (and SPC only)

Some last examples:

var=$'\n\nthis is\n\n\na test\n\n'
IFS=$'\n' read -ra arr -d '' <<<"$var"
i=0; for a in "${arr[@]}"; do let i++; echo "$i [$a]"; done

outputs

1 [this is]
2 [a test]

while

unset IFS
var=$'\n\nthis is\n\n\na test\n\n'
read -ra arr -d '' <<<"$var"
i=0; for a in "${arr[@]}"; do let i++; echo "$i [$a]"; done

outputs

1 [this]
2 [is]
3 [a]
4 [test]

BTW:

• If you are not used to $'ANSI-ESCAPED-STRING' get used to it; it's a timesaver.

• If you do not include -r (like in read -a arr <<<"$var") then read does backslash escapes. This is left as exercise for the reader.

For the second question:

To test for something in a string I usually stick to case, as this can check for multiple cases at once (note: case only executes the first match, if you need fallthrough use multiple case statements), and this need is quite often the case (pun intended):

case "$var" in
'')                empty_var;;                # variable is empty
*' '*)             have_space "$var";;        # have SPC
*[[:space:]]*)     have_whitespace "$var";;   # have whitespaces like TAB
*[^-+.,A-Za-z0-9]*) have_nonalnum "$var";;    # non-alphanum-chars found
*[-+.,]*)          have_punctuation "$var";;  # some punctuation chars found
*)                 default_case "$var";;      # if all above does not match
esac

So you can set the return value to check for SPC like this:

case "$var" in (*' '*) true;; (*) false;; esac

Why case? Because it usually is a bit more readable than regex sequences, and thanks to Shell metacharacters it handles 99% of all needs very well.

For checking spaces just with bash:

[[ "$str" = "${str% *}" ]] && echo "no spaces" || echo "has spaces"

echo $WORDS | xargs -n1 echo

This outputs every word, you can process that list as you see fit afterwards.

Just use the shells "set" built-in. For example,

set $text

After that, individual words in $text will be in $1, $2, $3, etc. For robustness, one usually does

set -- junk $text
shift

to handle the case where $text is empty or start with a dash. For example:

text="This is          a              test"
set -- junk $text
shift
for word; do
  echo "[$word]"
done

This prints

[This]
[is]
[a]
[test]

(A) To split a sentence into its words (space separated) you can simply use the default IFS by using

array=( $string )

Example running the following snippet

#!/bin/bash

sentence="this is the \"sentence\"   'you' want to split"
words=( $sentence )

len="${#words[@]}"
echo "words counted: $len"

printf "%s\n" "${words[@]}" ## print array

will output

words counted: 8
this
is
the
"sentence"
'you'
want
to
split

As you can see you can use single or double quotes too without any problem

Notes:
-- this is basically the same of mob's answer, but in this way you store the array for any further needing. If you only need a single loop, you can use his answer, which is one line shorter :)
-- please refer to this question for alternate methods to split a string based on delimiter.


(B) To check for a character in a string you can also use a regular expression match.
Example to check for the presence of a space character you can use:

regex='\s{1,}'
if [[ "$sentence" =~ $regex ]]
    then
        echo "Space here!";
fi

I like the conversion to an array, to be able to access individual elements:

sentence="this is a story"
stringarray=($sentence)

now you can access individual elements directly (it starts with 0):

echo ${stringarray[0]}

or convert back to string in order to loop:

for i in "${stringarray[@]}"
do
  :
  # do whatever on $i
done

Of course looping through the string directly was answered before, but that answer had the the disadvantage to not keep track of the individual elements for later use:

for i in $sentence
do
  :
  # do whatever on $i
done

See also Bash Array Reference.

$ echo "This is   a sentence." | tr -s " " "\012"
This
is
a
sentence.

For checking for spaces, use grep:

$ echo "This is   a sentence." | grep " " > /dev/null
$ echo $?
0
$ echo "Thisisasentence." | grep " " > /dev/null     
$ echo $?
1