Loop through a comma-separated shell variable

shell loops unix for-loop cut
Ramanathan K picture Ramanathan K · Dec 30, 2014 · Viewed 153.5k times · Source

Suppose I have a Unix shell variable as below

variable=abc,def,ghij

I want to extract all the values (abc, def and ghij) using a for loop and pass each value into a procedure.

The script should allow extracting arbitrary number of comma-separated values from $variable.

Answer

neric picture neric · Mar 9, 2016

Not messing with IFS
Not calling external command

variable=abc,def,ghij
for i in ${variable//,/ }
do
    # call your procedure/other scripts here below
    echo "$i"
done

Using bash string manipulation http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/string-manipulation.html

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