I have been meaning for a few weeks to write a brief tip about the IFS (Internal File Seperator). Granted, mine was going to cover how the IFS is affected by sub-shells (including the less-obvious examples such as while loops), but the ChatGPT did a pretty good job of writing the basics in less than one second!

This is what it wrote (the block below is ChatGPT-generated content, not mine!):

The Internal Field Separator (IFS) is a special shell variable in Bash that
determines how Bash splits words and fields. It is used when Bash reads a
command or script, and it controls how Bash interprets spaces, tabs, and
newline characters.

By default, the IFS is set to a space, a tab, and a newline character. This
means that when Bash reads a command or script, it will split the input into
words wherever it encounters a space, a tab, or a newline character.

You can change the value of the IFS variable to customize how Bash splits
words and fields. For example, you might set the IFS to a colon (:) if you
want to split input on colon characters instead of spaces or tabs.

Here's an example of how you might use the IFS variable in a Bash script:

# Set the IFS to a comma
IFS=','

# Read a line of input from the user
read -r field1 field2 field3

# Split the input on commas
echo "Field 1: $field1"
echo "Field 2: $field2"
echo "Field 3: $field3"
In this example, the IFS is set to a comma (,) before the user is prompted to enter
input. When the user enters a line of input, Bash will split the input on commas
and assign the resulting fields to the variables field1, field2, and field3. The
echo commands will then print the values of these variables to the console.

I will get around to expounding further, in the meantime my ancient blog has a bit more information!

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