Get two values from command output in a bash script

Question

I have a bashscript, which executes a command and calculates a pair of values, which output can look like this.

a,b (10.0000000000, 10.0000000000) -> volt (2088133.7088034691, -222653.3238934391)

And in case of invalid parameters or errors the program can show different error-messages.

Is there a safe way to parse the two volt-values and store them in two variables in a bash script?

Answer 1

Depends on how reliable the output is and what happens when you get the "different error messages", ie., how that would have to be handled.

A basic approach, with what you have above, you could use awk:

awk -F"[)(, ]" '{printf "var1=%s\nvar2=%s\n", $11,$13}'      
var1=2088133.7088034691
var2=-222653.3238934391

A "safe way" would depend on what those error messages do to the output...

A more robust approach would be to use awk's built-in NF variable to calculate the relevant fields:

awk -F"[)(, ]" '{printf "var1=%s\nvar2=%s\n", $(NF-3),$(NF-1)}'