How to combine array items with string substitution?

Asked Aug 13 '20 at 07:43

Active Aug 13 '20 at 08:04

Viewed 24 times

I'm trying to use Bash string substitution to combine an array. Desired output:

cat,dog,fish

This works, but isn't there a way to do with without piping?

#!/bin/bash
words=(cat dog fish)
echo "${words[@]}" | sed 's/ /,/g'

I've been trying this, which doesn't work.

echo "${words[@]// /,/}"

edited Aug 13 '20 at 08:04

asked Aug 13 '20 at 07:43

user428109

@AdminBee , so it's not possible with string substitution? – user428109 Aug 13 '20 at 07:58
Not in the way you suppose, because the individual array elements are the "bare" words without leading or trailing space - there simply is no space that you could substitute with a ,. You only use spaces when filling the array with a list, to indicate to bash where one element ends and the next one starts. You could just as well have said declare -A words; words[1]="cat"; words[2]="dog"; words[3]="fish" and get the same array content. – AdminBee Aug 13 '20 at 08:23

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