I’m a complete noob when it comes to bash, I extracted some timestamps from an xml file using xmlstarlet however its formatted as a space separated string rather than an array. I need them as an array so that I can use them in a for loop. As far as I can tell you can’t do that with xmlstarlet so I need to just convert the string.

I found this thread which says I can use IFS=’ ’ read -a arr <<< “$line” which works for a basic string but not the one I’m trying to use it with:

2023-06-19T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-18T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-17T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-16T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-15T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-14T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-13T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-10T00:00:00+01:00 2023-06-03T00:00:00+01:00 2023-05-31T00:00:00+01:00 2023-05-27T00:00:00+01:00

If I use the command on this string it only puts the first part in the array so I get 2023-06-19T00:00:00+01:00

I also tried arr=( $line ) which is also suggested in the thread but that does the same thing. Is there another way I can try to convert this, or a way to export from xmlstarlet straight to an array?

  • _HR_@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    Using Bash for this when source data is XML is simply wrong. It’s not the right tool for the job. You should consider learning basics of Python, which you could use to work with the source data.

    Unless you already know how to do that in Python, and are simply interested in figuring out how to do that in Bash, in which case godspeed to you.