If you have a string with a delimiter, let's say a , character, you could use IFS just like that:
text=some,comma,separated,text
IFS="," read -ra ADDR <<< "$text"
for i in ${ADDR[@]}
do
echo $i
done
Each word will be printed in a new line. But if you grab the result of command like ls and then try to split it on the \n you don't get to the same result:
results=$(ls -la)
IFS="\n" read -ra ADDR <<< "$results"
for i in ${ADDR[@]}
do
echo $i
done
It only prints 2 lines, and they are not even the file entries. It is
total
36
The first line of the ls command output.
Can someone give a little help? If it is not the correct way, how is that?
read usually reads until it reaches newline, unless you tell it otherwise using -d.
In this example, we use -d $'\0'. This has the shell read until it reaches a null character (which it won't in the output of ls). Then IFS=$'\n' causes the shell to split on newline and assign each line as an array element. Note the use of $'...' instead of "..." to interpret the escape sequences.
results=$(ls -la)
IFS=$'\n' read -ra ADDR -d $'\0' <<< "$results"
for i in "${ADDR[@]}"
do
echo "$i"
done
Last but not least, we have to quote both the substitutions of the array and $i.