Bash array length always gives me as 1

Question

I had written a bash script as below.

...file1.sh..

read samplearrrr;
echo "*******************"
echo ${#samplearrrr[@]}
echo "*******************"

From terminal I run it as ./file1.sh, and give the input to read as 23 45 67 88,

The length in the output is always getting as 1.

I tried to google it, but did not find a solution.

You have created a variable not an array, and you have only added one element to it. — jesse_b
– jesse_b, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 2:27
So, if we need to get the elements given in terminal at runtime, then we need to split those elements based on the space and store in another array. Is that right ? — sai
– sai, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 2:30
Try help read rather than google: Options: -a array assign the words read to sequential indices of the array — steeldriver
– steeldriver, Commented Mar 14, 2018 at 2:30

Kusalananda · Accepted Answer · 2018-03-14 06:21:10Z

1

Your code reads a words into a variable as a single string. It will not automatically be converted into an array.

In bash, you may use -a with read to read the values into an array:

read -r -p 'enter array values: ' -a vals
printf 'I got %d values\n' "${#vals[@]}"

answered Mar 14, 2018 at 6:21

Kusalananda♦

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