Split single string into character array using ONLY bash

Question

I want to split 'hello' into h e l l o in an array using only bash, I could do it in sed with sed 's/./& /g' but I want to know how to split a string into an array in Bash when I do not know what the delimiter would be, or the delimiter is any single character. I don't think I can use ${i// /} without some creativity because the delimiter is an unknown, and I don't think that expression accepts regex. I tried using BASH_REMATCH with [[ string =~ ([a-z].).* ]] but it doesn't work as I expected. What is the proper way to use only bash to accomplish a string.split() type of behavior? The reason is that I am trying to write the rev utility in all bash:

  while read data; do
  word=($(echo $data|tr ' ' '_'|sed 's/./& /g'))
  new=()
  i=$((${#word[@]} - 1))
  while [[ $i -ge 0 ]]; do
    new+=(${word[$i]})
    (( i-- ))
  done
  echo ${new[@]}|tr -d ' '|tr '_' ' '
  done

But I used tr and sed, I want to know how to do the split properly and then I will fix it to be all bash. Just for fun.

Answer 1

s="hello"
declare -a a   # define array a
for ((i=0; i<${#s}; i++)); do a[$i]="${s:$i:1}"; done
declare -p a   # print array a in a reusable form

Output:

declare -a a='([0]="h" [1]="e" [2]="l" [3]="l" [4]="o")'

---

or (please note the comments)

s="hello"
while read -n 1 c; do a+=($c); done  <<< "$s"
declare -p a

Output:

declare -a a='([0]="h" [1]="e" [2]="l" [3]="l" [4]="o")'

Answer 2

To split string into array of characters, with null delimiter, you can:

str='hello'
arr=()
i=0
while [ "$i" -lt "${#str}" ]; do
  arr+=("${str:$i:1}")
  i=$((i+1))
done

printf '%s\n' "${arr[@]}"

With delimiter other than null, you can:

set -f
str='1,2,3,4,5'
IFS=',' arr=($str)
printf '%s\n' "${arr[@]}"

Answer 3

Just for fun (and other shells) other variant:

word=hello
unset letter
while [ ${#word} -gt 0 ]
do
    rest=${word#?}
    letter[${#letter[*]}]=${word%$rest}
    word=$rest
done

And check

for l in "${!letter[@]}"
do
    echo "letter [$l] = ${letter[l]}"
done

will print

letter [0] = h
letter [1] = e
letter [2] = l
letter [3] = l
letter [4] = o

Answer 4

Method 1:

Oneliner:

s="hello"
for ((i=0;i<${#s};i++)); do result[$i]="${s:i:1}"; done
echo ${result[@]}

Expanded code:

s="hello"                   # Original string.

for ((i=0;i<${#s};i++)); do # For i=0; i<(length of s); i++
    result[$i]="${s:i:1}"       # result[i] is equal to the i th character of $s
done                        # End of the loop

echo ${result[@]} # Print all elements of $result.

---

Method 2:

Oneliner:

s="hello"
var=($(while read -n 1; do printf "$REPLY "; done <<< "$s"))
echo "${var[@]}"

Expanded code:

s="hello" # Original string.

while read -n 1; do # Read chraracter by character the string.
    space_separated=$(printf "$space_separated $REPLY") # $space_separated is equal to it plus the current character.
done <<< "$s" # Pass the string to the loop

result=($space_separated) # Split $space_separated into an array.

echo "${result[@]}" # Print all elements of $result.

---

Thanks to @cuonglm by it's suggestion.
Effectively, you can use $REPLY that is the default varible where read reads the input.