How to split a delimited string into an array in awk?

Question

How to split the string when it contains pipe symbols | in it. I want to split them to be in array.

I tried

echo \"12:23:11\" | awk \'{s         


        

Answer 1

I do not like the echo "..." | awk ... solution as it calls unnecessary fork and execsystem calls.

I prefer a Dimitre's solution with a little twist

awk -F\| '{print $3 $2 $1}' <<<'12|23|11'

Or a bit shorter version:

awk -F\| '$0=$3 $2 $1' <<<'12|23|11'

In this case the output record put together which is a true condition, so it gets printed.

In this specific case the stdin redirection can be spared with setting an awk internal variable:

awk -v T='12|23|11' 'BEGIN{split(T,a,"|");print a[3] a[2] a[1]}'

I used ksh quite a while, but in bash this could be managed by internal string manipulation. In the first case the original string is split by internal terminator. In the second case it is assumed that the string always contains digit pairs separated by a one character separator.

T='12|23|11';echo -n ${T##*|};T=${T%|*};echo ${T#*|}${T%|*}
T='12|23|11';echo ${T:6}${T:3:2}${T:0:2}

The result in all cases is

112312