Convert bash string to array

Question

I have a script (in Node.js) named script.js which outputs the following string:

(1, 2, 3)

I want to read it in a loop in the following way:

INDICES=$(node script.js)
for i in "{INDICES[@]}"
do
    echo $i
done

Instead of printing

1
2
3

I get

(1, 2, 3)

Since the script output is read as string.

How do I make it an array?

Answer 1

#!/bin/bash

inputstr="(1, 2, 3)"

newstr=$(echo $inputstr | sed 's/[()]//g' ) # remove ( and )

IFS=', ' read -r -a myarray <<< "$newstr" # delimiter is ,

for index in "${!myarray[@]}"
do
    # echo "$index ${myarray[index]}"  #  shows index and value
      echo        "${myarray[index]}"  #  shows           value
done

which give this output

./string_to_array.sh
1
2
3

Answer 2

Solution by Scott is pretty good, but it uses external processes. Here is a method that uses bash build-ins only:

#!/bin/bash

inputstr="(one, two, three)"
tempvar=$(echo $inputstr)
array=(${tempvar//[\(\),]/})

for value in "${array[@]}"; do
  echo "${value}"
done