Code Snippets — 2026-08-15

💻 CODE SNIPPET — Aug 15, 2026

Bash: Parse Any Key-Value Output into Structured Data

A single, reusable function that extracts key-value pairs from messy text output — systemctl status, /proc/cpuinfo, openssl x509, git config, .env files, and more. Handles inconsistent whitespace, embedded delimiters (colons in URLs), and multiple delimiter types.

kv_parse() {
    local input="$1"
    local mode="${2:-pairs}"
    local target="${3:-}"

    echo "$input" | while IFS= read -r line; do
        # Match KEY: VALUE, KEY=VALUE, or KEY	VALUE
        if [[ "$line" =~ ^[[:space:]]*([^:=[:space:]]+)[[:space:]]*[:=][[:space:]]*(.+)$ ]]; then
            local key="${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"
            local value="${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
            value="${value%%[[:space:]]}"  # trim trailing whitespace

            if [[ "$mode" == "get" && "$key" == "$target" ]]; then
                echo "$value"
                return 0
            elif [[ "$mode" == "pairs" ]]; then
                echo "${key}=${value}"
            fi
        fi
    done
}

Single value extraction:

# Get just the model from /proc/cpuinfo
kv_parse "$(cat /proc/cpuinfo)" "get" "model name"
# → Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10700K

# Extract a specific .env value
kv_parse "$(cat .env)" "get" "DATABASE_URL"

Batch mode — iterate all pairs:

kv_parse "$(git config -l)" "pairs" | while IFS='=' read -r key value; do
    echo "Config: [$key] → $value"
done

💡 Pro tip: Combine with --get in scripts to extract specific values from any tool's output without brittle grep | sed chains. Works with : or = delimiters automatically.