Often you may want to loop over tuples in Bash.
You can use the following syntax to do so:
for i in "A 1" "B 2" "C 3" "D 4"
do
set -- $i
echo $1 $2
done
This particular example will print out each element in each tuple, separated by a space.
Note that we use the set command to convert each element in each tuple into arguments $1, $2, etc.
We are then able to use the echo command to output the element of each tuple, using $1 and $2 as references to each element.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: How to Loop Over Tuples in Bash
Suppose that we would like to loop over the following tuples in Bash in which the first element of each tuple is a letter and the second element is a number:
- A 1
- B 2
- C 3
- D 4
We can use the following syntax to do so:
for i in "A 1" "B 2" "C 3" "D 4"
do
set -- $i
echo $1 $2
done
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
The output displays each element from each tuple, separated with a space.
Note that we could also use a different separator between the elements of each tuple if we would like.
For example, we could use the following syntax to separate the elements with a colon instead:
for i in "A 1" "B 2" "C 3" "D 4"
do
set -- $i
echo $1:$2
done
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
The output displays each element from each tuple, separated with a colon.
Feel free to use similar syntax to loop over the elements in your own tuples.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Bash:
Bash: How to List All Files in Folder by Size
Bash: How to List All Files in Folder Without Extension
Bash: How to List All Files Matching a Specific Pattern
