# Split a String on a Delimiter in Bash with IFS

> Split a string by a delimiter in Bash using IFS with read -ra to parse into an array, with an alternative approach using the cut command for known sizes

**URL:** https://sentry.io/answers/split-string-on-delimiter-in-bash/

---

## The Problem

I have the following string stored in a Bash variable:

```
string="Doe, Jane;Smith, John;Bloggs, Joe"
```

How can I split this string on the `;` delimiter in Bash?

## The Solution

To split the string in this variable, we can temporarily set Bash's input field separator variable (`IFS`) to the desired delimiter while reparsing it into an array [`read -ra`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Read_(Unix)). For example:

```bash
string="Doe, Jane;Smith, John;Bloggs, Joe"

IFS=";" read -ra names <<<"$string"

for name in "${names[@]}"; do
  echo "$name"
done
```

This code will produce the following output:

```
Doe, Jane
Smith, John
Bloggs, Joe
```

In our `read` command, the `-a` flag creates an array, and the `-r` flag prevents backslashes from escaping any characters in the string.

A simpler way to achieve this would be to use the [`cut`](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut_(Unix)) command, but this requires us to know the number of elements in the string, which may not be possible in all cases. The code below produces the same output using `cut` instead of `IFS`:

```bash
string="Doe, Jane;Smith, John;Bloggs, Joe"

for index in {1..3}; do
  echo "$string" | cut -d ";" -f $index
done
```

---

*Source: [sentry.io/answers/split-string-on-delimiter-in-bash/](https://sentry.io/answers/split-string-on-delimiter-in-bash/)*