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

Here's my pure bash solution that doesn't change IFS, and can take in a custom regex delimiter.

loop_custom_delimited() {
    local list=$1
    local delimiter=$2
    local item
    if [[ $delimiter != ' ' ]]; then
        list=$(echo $list | sed 's/ /'`echo -e "\010"`'/g' | sed -E "s/$delimiter/ /g")
    fi
    for item in $list; do
        item=$(echo $item | sed 's/'`echo -e "\010"`'/ /g')
        echo "$item"
    done
}