CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshellawk
user1504970
user1504970

Reputation: 33

need to split tab delimited text into multiple variables in linux

I need to split a line into multiple variables within single line of command. I need to fetch each field between tabs into a separate variable. For example:

000345AA6| |N|20150410|A & M FRNT 3/01/17|

I'm using awk to fetch each field and then eval to export variable to shell from awk. Since the last field (5th) has a space, I'm getting an error.

Code:

z=`echo "000380105| |%|20150410|ABCAM PLC ADR |" | awk -F "|" '{print "SOURCE_FIELD2="$2;SOURCE_FIELD3=$3;print "SOURCE_FIELD4="$4;SOURCE_FIELD5=$5;}'`
eval "$z"
echo $SOURCE_FIELD4

Actual Output: 

test.ksh[12]: PLC:  not found

Expected: 

ABCAM PLC ADR

I have 19 fields in the line and want to assign variables with good performance. Using the cut command is taking too long as I need to do this for about 130k lines.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1198

Answers (1)

John Kugelman
John Kugelman

Reputation: 361615

Use IFS=delim read -a array to read the fields into an array, splitting on the character(s) in $IFS.

while IFS='|' read -r -a fields; do
    printf '[%s]\n' "${fields[@]}"

    echo "${fields[0]}"
    echo "${fields[1]}"
    ...
done < file.txt

Upvotes: 3

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