Shell Programming and Scripting

123|xyz|datetime|count

cut -d"|" -f1 $PROPERTIES_FILE | tr '\n' ' '

a="123|xyz|datetime|count"

oifs="$IFS" # save default input field delimiter

IFS="|"  # change it
val=( $a )  # parse input to the array using $IFS

IFS=$oifs   # return $IFS, if need use default ...
echo "${val[0]}"
echo "${val[1]}"

val[0]="some"
val[2]="3th"

res=${val[@]}   # all values from array
res=${res// /|} # convert all spaces => |  (values can't include spaces in this case)
echo "res:$res"

while IFS="|" read COL1 COL2 COL3 COL4
do
        ...
done < inputfile

while IFS="|" read COL1 COL2 COL3 COL4
do
        # Alter column 4 on every line
        COL4="newvalue"
        echo "${COL1}|${COL2}|${COL3}|${COL4}"
done < inputfile > outputfile
# Overwrite input with output
cat outputfile > inputfile
# delete outputfile
rm outputfile

IFS="|" read COL1 COL2 COL3 COL4 < inputfile
COL4="newvalue"
echo "${COL1}|${COL2}|${COL3}|${COL4}" > inputfile