read in bash on whitespace-delimited file without empty fields collapsing

Solution 1:

Sure

IFS=,
echo $'one\t\tthree' | tr \\11 , | (
  read one two three
  printf '<%s> ' "$one" "$two" "$three"; printf '\n'
)

I've rearranged the example just a bit, but only to make it work in any Posix shell.

Update: Yeah, it seems that white space is special, at least if it's in IFS. See the second half of this paragraph from bash(1):

   The shell treats each character of IFS as a delimiter, and  splits  the
   results of the other expansions into words on these characters.  If IFS
   is unset, or its value is exactly <space><tab><newline>,  the  default,
   then  any  sequence  of IFS characters serves to delimit words.  If IFS
   has a value other than the default, then sequences  of  the  whitespace
   characters  space  and  tab are ignored at the beginning and end of the
   word, as long as the whitespace character is in the value  of  IFS  (an
   IFS whitespace character).  Any character in IFS that is not IFS white-
   space, along with any adjacent IFS whitespace  characters,  delimits  a
   field.   A  sequence  of IFS whitespace characters is also treated as a
   delimiter.  If the value of IFS is null, no word splitting occurs.

Solution 2:

It's not necessary to use tr, but it is necessary that IFS is a non-whitespace character (otherwise multiples get collapsed to singles as you've seen).

$ IFS=, read -r one two three <<<'one,,three'
$ printf '<%s> ' "$one" "$two" "$three"; printf '\n'
<one> <> <three>

$ var=$'one\t\tthree'
$ var=${var//$'\t'/,}
$ IFS=, read -r one two three <<< "$var"
$ printf '<%s> ' "$one" "$two" "$three"; printf '\n'
<one> <> <three>

$ idel=$'\t' odel=','
$ var=$'one\t\tthree'
$ var=${var//$idel/$odel}
$ IFS=$odel read -r one two three <<< "$var"
$ printf '<%s> ' "$one" "$two" "$three"; printf '\n'
<one> <> <three>

Solution 3:

I've written a function which works around this issue. This particular implementation is particular about tab-separated columns and newline-separated rows, but that limitation could be removed as a straightforward exercise:

read_tdf_line() {
    local default_ifs=$' \t\n'
    local n line element at_end old_ifs
    old_ifs="${IFS:-${default_ifs}}"
    IFS=$'\n'

    if ! read -r line ; then
        return 1
    fi
    at_end=0
    while read -r element; do
        if (( $# > 1 )); then
            printf -v "$1" '%s' "$element"
            shift
        else
            if (( at_end )) ; then
                # replicate read behavior of assigning all excess content
                # to the last variable given on the command line
                printf -v "$1" '%s\t%s' "${!1}" "$element"
            else
                printf -v "$1" '%s' "$element"
                at_end=1
            fi
        fi
    done < <(tr '\t' '\n' <<<"$line")

    # if other arguments exist on the end of the line after all
    # input has been eaten, they need to be blanked
    if ! (( at_end )) ; then
        while (( $# )) ; do
            printf -v "$1" '%s' ''
            shift
        done
    fi

    # reset IFS to its original value (or the default, if it was
    # formerly unset)
    IFS="$old_ifs"
}

Usage as follows:

# read_tdf_line one two three rest <<<$'one\t\tthree\tfour\tfive'
# printf '<%s> ' "$one" "$two" "$three" "$rest"; printf '\n'
<one> <> <three> <four       five>

Solution 4:

Here's an approach with some niceties:

input data from wherever becomes a pseudo-2D array in the main code (avoiding a common problem where the data is only available within one stage of a pipeline).
no use of awk, tr, or other external progs
a get/put accessor pair to hide the hairier syntax
works on tab-delimited lines by using param matching instead of IFS=

The code. file_data and file_input are just for generating input as though from a external command called from the script. data and cols could be parameterized for the get and put calls, etc, but this script doesn't go that far.

#!/bin/bash

file_data=( $'\t\t'       $'\t\tbC'     $'\tcB\t'     $'\tdB\tdC'   \
            $'eA\t\t'     $'fA\t\tfC'   $'gA\tgB\t'   $'hA\thB\thC' )
file_input () { printf '%s\n' "${file_data[@]}" ; }  # simulated input file
delim=$'\t'

# the IFS=$'\n' has a side-effect of skipping blank lines; acceptable:
OIFS="$IFS" ; IFS=$'\n' ; oset="$-" ; set -f
lines=($(file_input))                    # read the "file"
set -"$oset" ; IFS="$OIFS" ; unset oset  # cleanup the environment mods.

# the read-in data has (rows * cols) fields, with cols as the stride:
data=()
cols=0
get () { local r=$1 c=$2 i ; (( i = cols * r + c )) ; echo "${data[$i]}" ; }
put () { local r=$1 c=$2 i ; (( i = cols * r + c )) ; data[$i]="$3" ; }

# convert the lines from input into the pseudo-2D data array:
i=0 ; row=0 ; col=0
for line in "${lines[@]}" ; do
    line="$line$delim"
    while [ -n "$line" ] ; do
        case "$line" in
            *${delim}*) data[$i]="${line%%${delim}*}" ; line="${line#*${delim}}" ;;
            *)          data[$i]="${line}"            ; line=                     ;;
        esac
        (( ++i ))
    done
    [ 0 = "$cols" ] && (( cols = i )) 
done
rows=${#lines[@]}

# output the data array as a matrix, using the get accessor
for    (( row=0 ; row < rows ; ++row )) ; do
   printf 'row %2d: ' $row
   for (( col=0 ; col < cols ; ++col )) ; do
       printf '%5s ' "$(get $row $col)"
   done
   printf '\n'
done

Output:

$ ./tabtest 
row  0:                   
row  1:                bC 
row  2:          cB       
row  3:          dB    dC 
row  4:    eA             
row  5:    fA          fC 
row  6:    gA    gB       
row  7:    hA    hB    hC