Shell Programming and Scripting

Is there a way to have awk put successive records into an array in a bash script?

I have files that say things like

name :title :salary
Bob :Instructor :30,000
Joyce :Instructor :30,000
Patrick :Manager :40,000


What I want to do is seperate this file into an array so that the array would look like this:

array[0] = Bob :Instructor :30,000
array[1] = Joyce :Instructor :30,000
array[2] = Patrick :Manager :40,000

I figure there must be a way to make this happen through awk, but I am so new at this that I cannot think of how to do it, and I have not been able to locate an example or even instructions on how to do this.

I want this done in the bash script.

Please, any help that can be given would be greatly appreciated.

I have a simple solution:

Code:

eval_$(aw_ '{p_int _arra_["X+_"]=\_"$0"_""}'_file_

But it sounds like homework!

It is not homework. I didn't want to give the actual information in my message for security reasons. I am just new at my job and scripting is something that is coming very difficultly for me. I assume the red lines are characters that you just did not post. Is this for testing purposes?

Fair enough

Code:

$ eval $(awk '{print "array["X++"]=\""$0"\""}' file)
$ echo ${array[0]}                                  
Bob :Instructor :30,000

Thank you so much I really appreciate it. The wall I have been hitting my head on appreciates it too.

You can also do it from within a shell without invoking awk

Code:

#!/bin/bash

n=0
while read line
do
     if (( n > 0 ))
     then
         array[$((n - 1))]="$line"
     fi
     (( n++ ))
done < infile

echo ${array[0]}
echo ${array[1]}
echo ${array[2]}

awk and shell variables aren't really related to each other. awk is its own language and has its own variables so, even when processed by awk, you're still faced with the same problem -- getting text output from a stream into variables in the arrangement you want.

An even simpler way is to just tell the shell to split on newlines, so you can cram the text in raw:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

OLDIFS="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'

ARRAY=( `tail -n +2 file` )

IFS="$OLDIFS"