0

I'm running a script in Bash on a Mac and I am trying to split a string with the delimiter being a space into an array. The command I'm running is:

array = ($(echo "$string" | tr ' ' "\n"))

that returns the "unexpected '('" error. I've tried multiple solutions including

  • escaping the parentheses
  • putting quotes around the command
  • making sure the space wasn't causing the error
  • making sure my header is #!/bin/bash
dessert
  • 39,982
javarookie
  • 3
  • 2
    Please install shellcheck to help you debug scripts: sudo apt-get install shellcheck – George Udosen Jun 22 '18 at 20:42
  • Possible duplicate of https://askubuntu.com/questions/21136/how-to-debug-bash-script – David Foerster Jun 23 '18 at 19:31
  • 2
    reference to Mac not irrelevant - macs use an ancient version of Bash. Reopen to close as dupe of ultra generic question? No thanks. Please ask on [apple.se] or [unix.se] – Zanna Jun 23 '18 at 19:50
  • @Zanna Granted OP uses Mac, but the syntax of such basic thing as variable assignment and command substitution has been the same through multiple versions of bash, and in fact var_name=word , that is no-space between name, =, and word is POSIX-specified, so . . . version is actually irrelevant here and non-Mac specific. – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jun 23 '18 at 20:31
  • or use http://www.shellcheck.net/ online. – Cyrus Jun 24 '18 at 08:16

1 Answers1

6

First of all, assignments in shell scripts should not contain spaces between left-hand side of = ( the variable/array name ) and right-hand side of the assignment operator =. As for converting string to array, you don't need to replace spaces with newlines explicitly, just take advantage of automatic word splitting, which occurs when unquoted variables are called:

$ string='This is a hello world string'
$ array=( $string  )
$ echo ${array[3]}
hello
$ echo ${array[4]}
world
Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
  • 105,154
  • 20
  • 279
  • 497