Setting multiple field to awk variables at once - bash

Question

I am trying to set an awk variable field to several field at once.
Right now I can only set the variables one by one.
for line in `cat file.txt`;do
var1=`echo $line | awk -F, '{print $1}'`
var2=`echo $line | awk -F, '{print $2}'`
var3=`echo $line | awk -F, '{print $3}'`
#Some complex code....
done
I think this is costly cause it parses the linux variable several times. Is there a special syntax to set the variable at once? I know that awk has a BEGIN and END block but the reason I am trying to avoid the BEGIN and END block is to avoid nested awk.
I plan to place another loop and awk code in the #Some complex code.... part.
for line in `cat file.txt`;do
var1=`echo $line | awk -F, '{print $1}'`
var2=`echo $line | awk -F, '{print $2}'`
var3=`echo $line | awk -F, '{print $3}'`
for line2 in `cat file_old.txt`;do
vara=`echo $line2 | awk -F, '{print $1}'`
varb=`echo $line2 | awk -F, '{print $2}'`
# Do comparison of $var1,var2 and $vara,$varb , then do something with either
done
done

Answer 1

You can use the IFS internal field separator to use a comma (instead of whitespace) and do the assignments in a while loop:
SAVEIFS=$IFS;
IFS=',';
while read line; do
set -- $line;
var1=$1;
var2=$2;
var3=$3;
...
done < file.txt
IFS=$SAVEIFS;
This will save a copy of your current IFS, change it to a , character, and then iterate over each line in your file. The line set -- $line; will convert each word (separated by a comma) into a numeric-variable ($1, $2, etc.). You can either use these variables directly, or assign them to other (more meaningful) variable names.
Alternatively, you could use IFS with the answer provided by William:
IFS=',';
while read var1 var2 var3; do
...
done < file.txt
They are functionally identical and it just comes down to whether or not you want to explicitly set var1=$1 or have it defined in the while-loop's head.

Answer 2

Why are you using awk at all?
while IFS=, read var1 var2 var3; do
...
done < file.txt

Answer 3

#!/bin/bash
FILE="/tmp/values.txt"
function parse_csv() {
local lines=$lines;
> $FILE
OLDIFS=$IFS;
IFS=","
i=0
for val in ${lines}
do
i=$((++i))
eval var${i}="${val}"
done
IFS=$OLDIFS;
for ((j=1;j<=i;++j))
do
name="var${j}"
echo ${!name} >> $FILE
done
}
for lines in `cat file_old.txt`;do
parse_csv;
done
The problem you have described has only got 3 values, would there be a chance that 3 values may differ and be 4 or 5 or undefined ?
if so the above will parse through the csv line by line and output each value at a time on a new line in a file called /tmp/values.txt
feel free to modify to match your requirements its far more dynamic than defining 3 values