[clug] easier way to use IFS in bash?

[David Tulloh]

I'm not sure if you would consider this cheating, but personally I would 
use awk:

pos=0 # or whatever you are after
res=`echo "$var" | awk -v pos=$pos '{print $(pos+1)}'`


David

Steven Hanley wrote:
> All
> 
> Looking at using word splitting in bash, say I have a string and I want to
> return the 1st word before a whitespace character or the third word or
> something.
> 
> The below works
> 
> ******
> #! /bin/bash
> 
> function IFS_word_at_pos () {
>   local str1=$1
>   local pos=$2
>   local i=0
>   for word in $str1 ; do
>      if [ $i -eq $pos ] ; then
>         echo $word
>      fi
>      i=$(($i+1))
>   done
> }
> ******
> 
> var="zero one two three four five six seven"
> 
> res=`IFS_word_at_pos "$var" 0`
> echo $res
> 
> However it seems long and ugly to have to use a for loop in order to spluit
> up some words.
> 
> There are the glob based string expansion things you can use such as
> 
> res=${var% *}
> 
> which would return the first bunch of text before a space in the variable
> $var
> 
> However it is not generic to whitespace, obays the glob rules and also is
> not really what I would be after.
> 
> Does anyone have ideas of how to do this in a cleaner manner using the IFS
> whitespace stuff?
> 
> 	See You
> 	    Steve
>