Delimiter

Syntax

splitby -d "< /REGEX/ | LITERAL >" [selection...]
# or
splitby -d "< /REGEX/ | LITERAL >" [selection...]

By default, splitby will assume the first unrecognised argument it comes across is a delimiter. This is called an implicit delimiter.

splitby "<REGEX>" [selection...]

What it does

Splits each record into fields using a regular expression. The delimiter is required for field mode unless it can be auto-detected from the first argument.

Examples

Split on a literal comma:

echo "a,b,c" | splitby -d "," 2
# b

Split on regex whitespace:

echo "a   b   c" | splitby -d "/\\s+/" 3
# c

Gotchas

• Shells often eat backslashes. Use single quotes or double-escape ('\\s+').
• If a delimiter has already been set, implicit delimiters will instead error.