Bash: split by comma with special characters

Question

I have a list that is comma delimited like so... ``` 00:00:00:00:00:00,Bob's Laptop,11111111111111111 00:00:00:00:00:00,Mom & Dad's Computer,22222222222222222 00:00:00:00:00:00,Kitchen,33333333333333333 ``` I'm trying to loop over these lines and populate variables with the 3 columns in each row. My script works when the data has no spaces, ampersands, or apostrophes. When it does have those then it doesn't work right. Here is my script: ``` for line in $(cat list) do arr=(`echo $line | tr "," "
"`) echo "Field1: ${arr[0]}" echo "Field2: ${arr[1]}" echo "Field3: ${arr[2]}" done ``` If one of you bash gurus can point out how I can get this script to work with my list I would greatly appreciate it! EV

Accepted Answer

```
while IFS=, read field1 field2 field3
do
  echo $field1
  echo $field2
  echo $field3
done < list
```

Bash: split by comma with special characters

Solution

Problem