Get words from positions in string – Bash/Linux

I have the following string that I want to extract name and id from and store them in a variable. This is just an example, the list can be longer but they are separated the same way.

[["freepbx","NEWUPDATES","There are 6 modules available for online upgrades"],["cidlookup","noauth","OpenCNAM Requires Authentication"]]

The id’s in the string is freepbx and cidlookup, the names are NEWUPDATES and noauth.

I’d like them to come out like:

freepbx NEWUPDATES
cidlookup noauth

I’m running a program from command line that needs it’s input this way.

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer

This is one way to do it:

echo '[["freepbx","NEWUPDATES","There are 6 modules available for online upgrades"],["cidlookup","noauth","OpenCNAM Requires Authentication"]]' | sed -e 's/],[/n/g' -e 's/([[)*"//g' | awk -F ',' '{print $1, $2}'
freepbx NEWUPDATES
cidlookup noauth

Explanation:

The sed command s/],[/n/g will replace all ], [ which separate each record with a new line(n) character. This will allow you to treat each line as a separate record which makes all other tools much easier:)

The second sed command s/([[)*"//g will remove the quotes and the initial [[ at the start of the first record. This cleans up things from your data leaving only the , between your fields.

Finally, awk command -F ',' '{print $1, $2}', the -F tells awk to use the , as field separator (instead of space) and $1 and $2 to print the first and second fields.