Bash splitting a multi line string by a multi-character delimiter into an array

With AWK please try the following:

awk -v RS='^$' -v FS='DELIMITER' '{
    n = split($0, extracted)
    for (i=1; i<=n; i++) {
        print i". "extracted[i]
    }
}' sample.txt

which yields:

1. Some text here,
continuing on next line
2. Second chunk of text
which may as well continue on next line
3. Final chunk

If you require to transfer the awk array to bash array, further step will be needed depending on the succeeding process on the array.

You can try using arrays.

#!/bin/bash
str="continuing on next lineDELIMITERSecond chunk of text
which may as well continue on next lineDELIMITERFinal chunk";


delimiter=DELIMITER
s=$str$delimiter

array=();
while [[ $s ]]; do
array+=( "${s%%"$delimiter"*}" );
s=${s#*"$delimiter"};
done;
declare -p array

this will split your text into array based on your delimiter the result will be an array of your text.

array=([0]="continuing on next line" [1]=$'Second chunk of text\nwhich may as well continue on next line' [2]="Final chunk")

you can access each line using the array indices or you can print all the lines using printf '%s\n' "${array[@]}"

the results will be

continuing on next line Second chunk of text which may as well continue on next line Final chunk

The solution gives you an opportunity to do a lot with your text.

You can try something like:

awk 'BEGIN {RS="DELIMITER";} {print}' input_file

And then assign it to variable, etc...

I think the most challenge in the question is to handle space, newline, and DELIMITER correctly, and then put all things in an array. It it was to split file only, then it would be too easy. How about this template:

#!/bin/bash
gencode(){
  echo -e "extracted=(); read -r -d '' item <<-DELIMITER"
  sed 's:DELIMITER:\n&\nextracted+=("$item"); read -r -d "" item <<-&\n:' Input_file;
  echo -e "DELIMITER\n"'extracted+=("$item")'
}
gencode|cat -n                                 # for explaination purpose only
eval "`gencode`"                               # do not remove "eval"
for (( i=0; i < ${#extracted[@]}; i++ )); do   # print results
  echo "$i: ${extracted[i]}"
done

Outputs

     1  extracted=(); read -r -d '' item <<-DELIMITER
     2  Some text here,
     3  continuing on next line
     4  DELIMITER
     5  extracted+=("$item"); read -r -d "" item <<-DELIMITER
     6  Second chunk of text
     7  which may as well continue on next line
     8  DELIMITER
     9  extracted+=("$item"); read -r -d "" item <<-DELIMITER
    10  Final chunk
    11  DELIMITER
    12  extracted+=("$item")
0: Some text here,
continuing on next line
1: Second chunk of text
which may as well continue on next line
2: Final chunk

You can try Perl. With -0777 option, perl slurps the entire file into a $_ variable. You can then split the content using the DELIMITER. Check this out.

$ perl -0777 -ne '@x=split("DELIMITER");print join("\n\n",@x) ' hubbs.txt
Some text here,
continuing on next line

Second chunk of text
which may as well continue on next line

Final chunk

$

Adding array positions while printing

$ perl -0777 -ne '@x=split("DELIMITER"); for(@x) { print ++$i,". $_\n"  } ' hubbs.txt
1. Some text here,
continuing on next line
2. Second chunk of text
which may as well continue on next line
3. Final chunk


$