Bash extract strings between two characters - bash

Question

I have the output of query result into a bash variable, stored as a single line.
-------------------------------- | NAME | TEST_DATE | ----------------
--------------------- | TESTTT_1 | 2019-01-15 | | TEST_2 | 2018-02-16 | | TEST_NAME_3 | 2020-03-17 | -------------------------------------
I would like to ignore the column names(NAME | TEST_DATE) and store actual values of each name and test_date as a tuple in an array.
So here is the logic I am thinking, I would like to extract third string onwards between two '|' characters. These strings are comma separated and when a space is encountered we start the next tuple in the array.
Expected output:
array=(TESTTT_1,2019-01-15 TEST_2,2018-02-16 TEST_NAME_3,2020-03-17)
Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

let say your
String is stored in variable a (or pipe our query output to below command
echo "$a"
-------------------------------- | NAME | TEST_DATE | ----------------
--------------------- | TESTTT_1 | 2019-01-15 | | TEST_2 | 2018-02-16 | | TEST_NAME_3 | 2020-03-17 | ------------------------------------
Command to obtain desired results is:
array="$(echo "$a" | cut -d '|' -f2,3,5,6,8,9 | tail -n1 | sed 's/ | /,/g')
Above will store ourput in variable named array as you expected
Output of above command is:
echo "$array"
TESTTT_1,2019-01-15,TEST_2,2018-02-16,TEST_NAME_3,2020-03-17
Explanation of command: output of echo $a will be piped into cut and using '|' as delimeter it will cut fields 2,3,5,6,8,9 then the output is piped into tail to remove the undesired NAME and TEST_DATE columns and provide values only and then as per your expected output | will be converted to , using sed.
Here in this string you are having only three dates if you have more then just in cut command add more field numbers and as per format of your string field numbers will be in following style 2,3,5,6,8,9,11,12,14,15 .... and so on.
Hope it solved your problem.

Answer 2

echo "$a" | awk -F "|" '{ for(i=2; i<=NF; i++){ print $i }}' | sed -e '1,3d' -e '$d' | tr ' ' '\n' | sed '/^$/d' | sed 's/^/,/g' | sed -e 'N;s/\n/ /' | sed 's/^.//g' | xargs | sed 's/ ,/, /g'
Above is awk based solution
Output:
TESTTT_1, 2019-01-15 TEST_2, 2018-02-16 TEST_NAME_3, 2020-03-17
Is it ok.