Shell Programming and Scripting

echo $var | awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1)}'

{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "result" => [
        "mainhost",
        "secondhost"
    ]
}

$ awk -F\" '/"result"/ { getline; print $2; getline; print $2 }' file1
mainhost
secondhost

echo $var | awk -F\" '{print $(NF-1), $(NF-3)}'

{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "result" => [
        "mainhost",
        "secondhost"
        "thirdhost"
    ]
}

$ cat myScript
awk -F\" '/"result"/ { P=1; next }
  /]/ { P=0 }
  P { X=(X?X " " $2:$2) }
  END { print X }
' file1

$ cat file1
{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "result" => [
        "mainhost",
        "secondhost"
        "thirdhost"
    ]
}

$ ./myScript
mainhost secondhost thirdhost

{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "result" => [ "mainhost", "secondhost", "thirdhost", "fourthost", "manyhosts" ]
}

hosts=($(sed -n '/"result".*\[/,/\]/p' file1 | tr -d '\n' | sed 's/.*\[ *//;s/ *\].*//; s/ *, */ /g;'))
echo ${hosts[@]}
"mainhost" "secondhost" "thirdhost" "fourthost" "manyhosts"