How to split string with unequal amount of spaces [duplicate] - bash

Question

This question already has answers here:
How do I pipe a file line by line into multiple read variables?
(3 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
I am currently struggling, with splitting a string with a varying amount of spaces, coming from a log file.
An excerpt of the log file:
ProcessA Mon Nov 9 09:59 - 10:48 (00:48)
ProcessB Sun Nov 8 11:16 - 11:17 (00:00)
ProcessC Sat Nov 7 12:52 - 12:53 (00:00)
ProcessD Fri Nov 6 09:31 - 11:25 (01:54)
ProcessE Thu Nov 5 16:41 - 16:41 (00:00)
ProcessF Thu Nov 5 11:39 - 11:40 (00:00)
As you can see the amount of spaces between the process name and the date of execution varies between 2 to 5 spaces.
I would like to split it up into three parts; - process, date of execution, and execution time.
However I don’t see a solution to that, because of the unequal amount of spaces. Am I wrong or is splitting such a string incredibly hard?
Hopefully somebody out there is way smarter than me and can provide me with a solution for that 😊
Thanks to everybody in advance, who is willing trying to help me with that!

Answer 1

You can also assign fields directly in a read.
while read -r prc wd mon md start _ end dur _; do
echo "prc='$prc' wd='$wd' mon='$mon' md='$md' start='$start' end='$end' dur='${dur//[)(]/}'"
done < file
Output:
prc='ProcessA' wd='Mon' mon='Nov' md='9' start='09:59' end='10:48' dur='00:48'
prc='ProcessB' wd='Sun' mon='Nov' md='8' start='11:16' end='11:17' dur='00:00'
prc='ProcessC' wd='Sat' mon='Nov' md='7' start='12:52' end='12:53' dur='00:00'
prc='ProcessD' wd='Fri' mon='Nov' md='6' start='09:31' end='11:25' dur='01:54'
prc='ProcessE' wd='Thu' mon='Nov' md='5' start='16:41' end='16:41' dur='00:00'
prc='ProcessF' wd='Thu' mon='Nov' md='5' start='11:39' end='11:40' dur='00:00'
read generally doesn't care how much whitespace is between.

Answer 2

In bash, you can use a regex to parse each line:
#! /bin/bash
while IFS=' ' read -r line ; do
if [[ "$line" =~ ([^\ ]+)\ +(.+[^\ ])\ +'('([^\)]+)')' ]] ; then
process=${BASH_REMATCH[1]}
date=${BASH_REMATCH[2]}
time=${BASH_REMATCH[3]}
echo "$process $date $time."
fi
done
Or, use parameter expansions:
#! /bin/bash
while IFS=' ' read -r process datetime ; do
shopt -s extglob
date=${datetime%%+( )\(*}
time=${datetime#*\(}
time=${time%\)}
echo "$process $date $time."
done

Answer 3

Using awk:
awk '{printf $1; for (i=2; i<NF; i++) printf " %s",$i; print "",$NF}' < file.txt
produces:
ProcessA Mon Nov 9 09:59 - 10:48 (00:48)
ProcessB Sun Nov 8 11:16 - 11:17 (00:00)
ProcessC Sat Nov 7 12:52 - 12:53 (00:00)
ProcessD Fri Nov 6 09:31 - 11:25 (01:54)
ProcessE Thu Nov 5 16:41 - 16:41 (00:00)
ProcessF Thu Nov 5 11:39 - 11:40 (00:00)