How do I print the array element of a Bash array on separate lines? This one works, but surely there is a better way:
$ my_array=(one two three)
$ for i in ${my_array[@]}; do echo $i; done
one
two
three
Tried this one but it did not work:
$ IFS=$'\n' echo ${my_array[*]}
one two three
7 Answers
Try doing this :
$ printf '%s\n' "${my_array[@]}"
The difference between $@ and $*:
Unquoted, the results are unspecified. In Bash, both expand to separate args and then wordsplit and globbed.
Quoted,
"$@"expands each element as a separate argument, while"$*"expands to the args merged into one argument:"$1c$2c..."(wherecis the first char ofIFS).
You almost always want "$@". Same goes for "${arr[@]}".
Always quote them!
Just quote the argument to echo:
( IFS=$'\n'; echo "${my_array[*]}" )
the sub shell helps restoring the IFS after use
Using for:
for each in "${alpha[@]}"
do
echo "$each"
done
Using history; note this will fail if your values contain !:
history -p "${alpha[@]}"
Using basename; note this will fail if your values contain /:
basename -a "${alpha[@]}"
Using shuf; note that results might not come out in order:
shuf -e "${alpha[@]}"
Another useful variant is pipe to tr:
echo "${my_array[@]}" | tr ' ' '\n'
This looks simple and compact
I tried the answers here in a giant for...if loop, but didn't get any joy - so I did it like this, maybe messy but did the job:
# EXP_LIST2 is iterated
# imagine a for loop
EXP_LIST="List item"
EXP_LIST2="$EXP_LIST2 \n $EXP_LIST"
done
echo -e $EXP_LIST2
although that added a space to the list, which is fine - I wanted it indented a bit. Also presume the "\n" could be printed in the original $EP_LIST.
You could use a Bash C Style For Loop to do what you want.
my_array=(one two three)
for ((i=0; i < ${#my_array[@]}; i++ )); do echo "${my_array[$i]}"; done
one
two
three
I've discovered that you can use eval to avoid using a subshell. Thus:
IFS=$'\n' eval 'echo "${my_array[*]}"'
