Creating an array from a text file in Bash
Use the mapfile command:
mapfile -t myArray < file.txtThe error is using for -- the idiomatic way to loop over lines of a file is:
while IFS= read -r line; do echo ">>$line<<"; done < file.txtSee BashFAQ/005 for more details.
mapfile and readarray (which are synonymous) are available in Bash version 4 and above. If you have an older version of Bash, you can use a loop to read the file into an array:
arr=()while IFS= read -r line; do arr+=("$line")done < fileIn case the file has an incomplete (missing newline) last line, you could use this alternative:
arr=()while IFS= read -r line || [[ "$line" ]]; do arr+=("$line")done < fileRelated:
You can do this too:
oldIFS="$IFS"IFS=$'\n' arr=($(<file))IFS="$oldIFS"echo "${arr[1]}" # It will print `A Dog`.Note:
Filename expansion still occurs. For example, if there's a line with a literal * it will expand to all the files in current folder. So use it only if your file is free of this kind of scenario.