(bash) How to access chunks of command output as discrete array elements?

Question

nmcli -t -f STATE,WIFI,WWAN

gives the output

connected:enabled:disabled

which I'd like to convert to something like

Networking: connected, Wifi: enabled, WWAN: disabled

The logical solution to me is to turn this into an array. Being quite new to bash scripting, I have read that arrays are just regular variables and the elements are separated by whitespace. Currently my code is

declare -a NMOUT=$(nmcli -t -f STATE,WIFI,WWAN nm | tr ":" "\n")

which seems to sort of work for a for loop, but not if i want to ask for a specific element, as in ${NMOUT[]}. Clearly I am missing out on some key concept here. How do I access specific elements in this array?

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-10 20:32:45Z

2

IFS=: read -a NMOUT < <(nmcli -t -f STATE,WIFI,WWAN)

answered May 10, 2012 at 20:32

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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jordanm · Accepted Answer · 2012-05-11 02:12:53Z

1

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams provided a much better solution for creating the array. I will address the posted question.

Array's in bash are indexed by integers starting at 0.

"${NMOUT[0]}" # first element of the array
"${NMOUT[2]}" # third element of the array
"${NMOUT[@]}" # All array elements
"${NMOUT[*]}" # All array elements as a string

The following provides good information on using arrays in bash: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/005

answered May 11, 2012 at 2:12

jordanm

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3 Comments

dn3s Over a year ago

thanks for the link; looks useful! i ended up giving up after finding another command whose output was already formatted the way i needed, but this will be useful to know in the future.

jordanm Over a year ago

@dn3s The best way to say "thanks" is by upvoting or accepting answers.

dn3s Over a year ago

sorry about that. accepted, but can't upvote yet due to lack of rep.

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