grep result get separated by spaces when saving it to variable - bash

Question

need your help on this. I have a simple XML file goes like:
<Entity ID="12345" Record="1">
<Info>
<Type>Individual</Type>
<Name>Test</Name>
</Info>
<Entity Record="2">
<Info>
<Type>Individual</Type>
<Name>Test2</Name>
</Info>
And what I want to do is to grep the attributes and its value for the node.
This is my code:
entities=($(grep -oP '(?<=<Entity ).*(?=>)' "abc.xml"))
for j in ${!entities[*]}
do
echo "${entities[$j]}"
((count++))
done
echo "Total Count: $count"
Ouput:
ID="12345"
Record="1"
Record="2"
Total Count: 3
However, my desired result is supposed to be:
ID="12345" Record="1"
Record="2"
Total Count: 2
When I save the grep result to a variable, it somehow get separated whenever there is a space. Wondering if anyone could help me on this, thank you in advance.

Answer 1

I would highly suggest to use an XML parser, for example you could use xmlstarlet
Now assuming this is your valid XML file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<foo>
<Entity ID="12345" Record="1">
<Info>
<Type>Individual</Type>
<Name>Test</Name>
</Info>
</Entity>
<Entity ID="123456" Record="1">
<Info>
<Type>Individual</Type>
<Name>Test</Name>
</Info>
</Entity>
</foo>
To extract the fields something for starting could be:
xmlstarlet sel -T -t -m //Entity -o ID= -v "#ID" -o " Redcord=" -v "#Record" -n your.xml
This will print:
ID=12345 Redcord=1
ID=123456 Redcord=1
To count the number of elements:
xmlstarlet sel -t -c "count(//Entity)" your.xml
These are just the basics but hope it can help you to get an idea.

Answer 2

your IFS is wrong:
#!/bin/bash
ifs_ini="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'
entities=( $(grep -oP '(?<=<Entity ).*(?=>)' "abc.xml") )
for j in ${!entities[#]}; do
echo "${entities[$j]}"
((count++))
done
echo "Total Count: $count"
IFS="$ifs_ini"
output:
ID="12345" Record="1"
Record="2"
Total Count: 2