How to create an array of lines of double quoted strings in a shell script

Question

I'm trying to split a line with double quoted strings into an array:

input.txt:

"ABC" "This is TEST 1" "12.3.0"    
"AC" "This is TEST 221" "123"    
"CX" "This is TEST 16" "123.2"    
"LM" "This is TEST 9000" "123.6.6.1"

What I'm hoping to be the outcome for each line:

print $a[0] $a[1] $a[2]

ABC This is TEST 1 12.3.0

How best to grab each string per line? I'm trying to do this via command line and/or a shell script

Update: To help reduce complexity, I've updated my "input.txt" file as follows: input.txt:

'ABC' 'This is TEST 1' '12.3.0'    
'AC' 'This is "TEST" 221' '123'    
'CX' 'This is TEST 16' '123.2'    
'LM' 'This is TEST 9000' '123.6.6.1'

All the double quotes have been replaced with Single quotes, other that the ones with-in a value.

Answer 1

Assuming you are using bash:

IFS='"' a=("ABC" "This is TEST1" "12.3.0")

should almost work. The indexes will be off, with empty entries, but:

 while IFS='"' read -a a; do 
    echo ${a[1]} ${a[3]} ${a[5]}; done < input

gets you most of the way there. Keep in mind that this is pretty fragile.