Separate and add numbers from an external file with .sh

Question

Question #1

How can I read a column and add each entry from a file using .sh?

Example file:

10000:max:100:1,2:3,4
10001:jill:50:7,8:3,2
10002:fred:300:5,6:7,8

How to use IFS=':' to read that file with a .sh file line by line and add the third part so that it would output the addition e.g. 450

$ ./myProgram myFile.txt
450

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Answer 1

A simple awk one-liner command would do this job.

$ awk -F: '{sum+=$3}END{print sum}' file
450

For each line, awk would add the column 3 value to the variable sum. Printing the variable sum at the end will give you the total count. -F: sets the Field Separator value to colon.