BASH - How to extract data from a column in CSV file and put it in an array?

Question

I am learning to script in Bash.

I have a CSV file with 5 columns and 22 rows. I am interested in taking the data from the second column and put it into an array.

Answer 1

Remove the IFS="," assignment thereby letting the default IFS value of space, tab, newline apply

#!/bin/bash

eCollection=( $(cut -d ',' -f2 MyAssignment.csv ) )
printf "%s\n" "${eCollection[0]}"

Answer 2

Two pure bash solutions:

eCollection=()
while IFS=',' read -r _ second _; do
    eCollection+=("$second")
done < file.txt
printf '%s\n' "${eCollection[0]}"

readarray -t eCollection < file.txt
eCollection=("${eCollection[@]#*,}")
eCollection=("${eCollection[@]%%,*}")
printf '%s\n' "${eCollection[0]}"

Answer 3

Better is to use readarray. No need to mind about IFS which could have any value, and is safe from pathname expansion.

readarray -t eCollection < <(cut -d, -f2 MyAssignment.csv)
printf '%s\n' "${eCollection[0]}"

Answer 4

i like to use awk. First split based on , delimiter and take required column values into array.

abc=($(tail -n +1 MyAssignment.csv | awk -F ',' '{print $2;}'))
echo ${abc[1]}

Index start from 1. If the file contains headers, replace +1 with +2 to ignore headers.