Bash — split $PATH by colon and for in

BASH.md

Bash — split $PATH by colon and for in

for i in $(echo "$PATH" | sed 's/:/ /g'); do echo $i;  done;

• Replace colon to space in $PATH
• Pass to for command space separated $PATH
• for command ( foo roop ) catches that strings as multiple arguments ( so not quote string )
  • So double quotationed string pattern does not work well because for command get in string one argument. ( e.g "$(echo "$PATH" | sed 's/:/ /g')" )

Output example

bash-4.4$ for i in $(echo "$PATH" | sed 's/:/ /g'); do echo $i;  done;
/Users/yuma/.rbenv/shims
/Users/yuma/.rbenv/bin
/Users/yuma/.rbenv/shims
/Users/yuma/.rbenv/bin
./vendor/bin
/Users/yinaura/google-cloud-sdk/bin
/usr/local/opt/openssl/bin
/Users/yuma/.pyenv/shims
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

Other example

get first of $PATH

for i in $(echo "$PATH" | sed 's/:/ /g'); do echo $i; done | head -n 1
/Users/yuma/.rbenv/shims

get last of $PATH

for i in $(echo "$PATH" | sed 's/:/ /g'); do echo $i; done | tail -n -1
/sbin

Maybe

Use awk is better?

Versions

• GNU bash, version 4.4.23(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin17.5.0)

Links

• https://medium.com/supersonic-generation/bash-example-split-path-and-for-in-620ac021cca5