Loop through a comma-separated shell variable

Question

Suppose I have a Unix shell variable as below

variable=abc,def,ghij

I want to extract all the values (abc, def an

Answer 1

If you set a different field separator, you can directly use a for loop:

IFS=","
for v in $variable
do
   # things with "$v" ...
done

You can also store the values in an array and then loop through it as indicated in How do I split a string on a delimiter in Bash?:

IFS=, read -ra values <<< "$variable"
for v in "${values[@]}"
do
   # things with "$v"
done

Test

$ variable="abc,def,ghij"
$ IFS=","
$ for v in $variable
> do
> echo "var is $v"
> done
var is abc
var is def
var is ghij

You can find a broader approach in this solution to How to iterate through a comma-separated list and execute a command for each entry.

Examples on the second approach:

$ IFS=, read -ra vals <<< "abc,def,ghij"
$ printf "%s\n" "${vals[@]}"
abc
def
ghij
$ for v in "${vals[@]}"; do echo "$v --"; done
abc --
def --
ghij --