Having some trouble with this operation, found that you can use string replacement syntax to also split a string to array:
NPM_VER=$(npm -v) # 6.12.1 NPM_VER=(${NPM_VER//./ }) # Split on '.' as delimiter echo "${NPM_VER[0]" # 6 echo "${NPM_VER[1]" # 12 echo "${NPM_VER[2]" # 1