Does `dash` support `bash` style arrays?

Question

In the dash shell environment I am looking to split a string into arrays. The following code works in bash but not in dash.

IFS=""
var="this is a test|second test|the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
IFS="|"
test=( $var )
echo ${test[0]}
echo ${test[1]}
echo ${test[2]}

My Question

Does dash support arrays in this style. If not are there any suggestions for parsing this out into an another type of variable without the use of a loop?

Alguire

Answer 1

dash does not support arrays. You could try something like this:

var="this is a test|second test|the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
oldIFS=$IFS
IFS="|"
set -- $var
echo "$1"
echo "$2"
echo "$3"      # Note: if more than $9 you need curly braces e.g. "${10}"
IFS=$oldIFS

---

Note: Since the variable expansion $var is unquoted it gets split into fields according to IFS, which was set to a vertical bar. These fields become the parameters of the set command and as a result $1 $2 etc contain the sought after values.

-- (end of options) is used so that no result of the variable expansion can be interpreted as an option to the set command.

Fryd

You may want to use set -f to disable globbing. See note from shellcheck here: shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2086#exceptions – Koslo