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What is the exact meaning of IFS=$’\n’?

Normally bash doesn’t interpret escape sequences in string literals. So if you write \n or “\n” or ‘\n’, that’s not a linebreak – it’s the letter n (in the first case) or a backslash followed by the letter n (in the other two cases). $’somestring’ is a syntax for string literals with escape sequences. So … Read more

Trying to split a string into two variables

This is a bug in Bash 4.2. See chepner’s answer for a proper explanation. It is about quotes. Use: IFS=’:’ read var1 var2 <<< “$var” ^ ^ instead of IFS=’:’ read var1 var2 <<< $var See result: $ IFS=’:’ read var1 var2 <<< “$var” $ echo “var1=$var1, var2=$var2” var1=hello, var2=world But $ IFS=’:’ read var1 … Read more