How to initialize an array using awk and bash?

Question

I am trying to store values of the first line of a text file into an array. Here is what I have so far:

arr_values=()

awk '
    NR==1 {
            for (i=0; i<=NF; i++)
               'arr_values[i]'=$i
          }' file.txt

for ((i=0; i<${#arr_values[@]}; i++))
do
   echo arr_values[i]
done

I am getting an error with initializing the array mainly because I don't know how to use awk to initialize an external array. Any suggestions (only with awk )? Thanks.

Answer 1

You can do this:

read -a array <<< $(head -n 1 file)

echo ${array[0]}
echo ${array[1]}

Answer 2

You probably can simply just do

read -ra arr_values < file.txt

Which would only process the first line and split it uniformly like awk does; saving it into arr_values . No need to fork with external binary commands.