Reading into multiple variables in Bash Scripting - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Reading into Multiple Variables in Bash

📖 Scenario: You work in a small office where you receive daily reports as single lines of text. Each line contains a person's first name, last name, and age separated by spaces. You want to write a simple script to read these details into separate variables for easy use later.

🎯 Goal: Build a Bash script that reads a single line of input containing a first name, last name, and age, and stores each piece of information into its own variable.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable to hold the input line.

Create three variables: first_name, last_name, and age.

Use the read command to split the input line into these three variables.

Print the variables to confirm the values were stored correctly.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

This technique helps when processing lines of text data, such as logs or reports, where each line contains multiple pieces of information separated by spaces.

💼 Career

Many automation and scripting tasks require parsing input into variables for further processing, making this a fundamental skill for system administrators and DevOps engineers.

1

Set up the input line

Create a variable called input_line and set it to the string "John Doe 28".

Bash Scripting

# Create a variable called input_line and assign it the value "John Doe 28"
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the syntax variable_name="value" to assign a string to a variable in Bash.

2

Prepare variables for reading

Create three empty variables called first_name, last_name, and age.

Bash Scripting

input_line="John Doe 28"
# Create empty variables first_name, last_name, and age
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign empty strings to variables using variable_name="".

3

Read the input line into variables

Use the read command with variables first_name, last_name, and age to split the contents of input_line into these variables.

Bash Scripting

input_line="John Doe 28"
first_name=""
last_name=""
age=""
# Use read to split input_line into first_name, last_name, and age
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use read var1 var2 var3 <<< "$input_line" to split the string into variables.

4

Print the variables

Print the variables first_name, last_name, and age each on its own line using echo.

Bash Scripting

input_line="John Doe 28"
first_name=""
last_name=""
age=""
read first_name last_name age <<< "$input_line"
# Print first_name, last_name, and age each on a new line
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo "$variable" to print each variable on its own line.