How to I read the second line of the output of a command into a bash variable?

Question

I have a command that prints several lines and I do want to put the second line into a bash variable.

like echo "AAA\nBBB" and I want a bash command that would put BBB in a bash variable.

Answer 1

With sed:

var=$(echo -e "AAA\nBBB" | sed -n '2p')

With awk:

var=$(echo -e "AAA\nBBB" | awk 'NR==2')

Then simply, echo your variable:

echo "$var"

Answer 2

Call read twice:

echo -e "AAA\nBBB" | { read line1 ; read line2 ; echo "$line2" ; }

Note that you need the {} so make sure both commands get the same input stream. Also, the variables aren't accessible outside the {}, so this does not work:

echo -e "AAA\nBBB" | { read line1 ; read line2 ; } ; echo "$line2"