Bash script to convert a string with space delimited tokens to an array

Question

I have a string

echo $STRING

which gives

first second third fourth fifth

basically a list separated spaces.

how do i take that string and make it an array so that

array[0] = first
array[1] = second

etc..

I have tried

IFS=' ' read -a list <<< $STRING

but then when i do an

echo ${list[@]}

it only prints out "first" and nothing else

Solution

It's simple actually:

list=( $STRING )

Or more verbosely:

declare -a list=( $STRING )

PS: You can't export IFS and use the new value in the same command. You have to declare it first, then use it's effects in the following command:

$ list=( first second third )
$ IFS=":" echo "${list[*]}"
first second third
$ IFS=":" ; echo "${list[*]}"
first:second:third

Comments

[ceving]

See here: stackoverflow.com/questions/918886/…

[Dan]

awesome that worked. But how does it know what to split it by?

[svckr]

IFS' default value is ` \t\n\r` or something like that. When assigning to an array using the ()-syntax everything between the parentheses gets expanded like parameters of a command, turning every "parameter" to an element of the array.