Splitting string to array in bash with long delimiter

Question

Using bash in Terminal on OSX, this code:

newtext="FIRST<br><br>SECOND<br><br>THIRD" IFS='<br><br>' read -ra text_array <<< "$newtext" printf "%s\n" "${text_array[@]}"

outputs:

FIRST







SECOND







THIRD>

Why does the array have so many newline elements? If I use single-character delimiters it works.

Answer 1

IFS can split string on each of the single character only and when you provide <br><br> it splits input on <, b, r and >.

You can use this work-around to get your job done:

s="FIRST<br><br>SECOND<br><br>THIRD"
del=$'\5'   # our arbitrary delimiter; can be any other control character
IFS="$del" read -ra arr <<< "${s//<br><br>/$del}"
declare -p arr

declare -a arr='([0]="FIRST" [1]="SECOND" [2]="THIRD")'

• del=$'\5' sets delimiter to control character \5. \5 is just an arbitrary character and it can be replaced with any other character that is not present in input.
• "${s//<br><br>/$del}" replace <br><br> with control character \5
• IFS="$del" splits input on \5 while populating array