Passing IFS values to a dynamic array

Question

i have a Oracle output (select output) as cand1 cand2 cand3 cand62 now i need to store these values in an array through shell script.

#!/bin/bash
instant_client="/root/ora_client/instantclient_11_2"
output=`$instant_client/sqlplus -s HRUSER/HRUSER@TOMLWF <<EOF
set heading off
set feedback off
set lines 10000
set pagesize 10000

select count (1) from onboardingcandidates o, candidatedetails c where o.candidateid=c.candidateid and o.JOININGSTATUS='0091' and to_date(o.joiningdate)=to_date(sysdate+5);

EOF
exit

query=`$instant_client/sqlplus -s HRUSER/HRUSER@TOMLWF <<EOF
set heading off
set feedback off
set lines 10000
set pagesize 10000

select o.candidateid from onboardingcandidates o, candidatedetails c where o.candidateid=c.candidateid and o.JOININGSTATUS='0091' and to_date(o.joiningdate)=to_date(sysdate+5);
EOF
exit


i=0
echo "Throwing individual arrays:"
while [ $i -le $output ]
do
a=${query[$i]}
echo Candidate[$i]=$a
i=$(($i+1))
done

OUTPUT IS

Throwing individual arrays:

    Candidate[0]= cand1 cand2 cand3 cand62
    Candidate[1]=
    Candidate[2]=
    Candidate[3]=
    Candidate[4]=

REQUIRED OUTPUT

Throwing individual arrays:

    Candidate[0]= cand1   
    Candidate[1]= cand2
    Candidate[2]= cand3
    Candidate[3]= cand62

Answer 1

The problem is that query is a string, not an array, so ${query[$i]} does not work as you expect.

In general, to convert a string to an array you would do this:

$ string="foo bar"
$ array=($string)
$ echo ${array[0]}
foo
$ echo ${array[1]}
bar

In your case, if you surround the sqlplus command with parentheses, the output will be stored in an array. Like this:

query=(`$instant_client/sqlplus -s HRUSER/HRUSER@TOMLWF <<EOF
set heading off
set feedback off
set lines 10000
set pagesize 10000

select o.candidateid from onboardingcandidates o, candidatedetails c where o.candidateid=c.candidateid and o.JOININGSTATUS='0091' and to_date(o.joiningdate)=to_date(sysdate+5);
EOF)

And then you can access elements in the query array using an index: ${query[$i]}

Answer 2

Something like this:

$ query="cand1 cand2 cand3 cand62"
$ read -a Candidate <<<$query
$ echo ${Candidate[0]}
cand1
$ echo ${Candidate[1]}
cand2

When you are out of your sqlplus, your "query" variable contains something like above. By simply reading the entire thing into an array as shown above, you can access the values.