Re: Problem with positional output

I think Stephane's method is best, though I don't see the need for the
noglob here, I think

    (IFS=\|; set -- $RETVAL; printf %s\\n "$3")

As an alternative if your data doesn't contain newlines, awk is
specialized for this,

   awk -F\| '{print $3}' <<<"$RETVAL"

will do the same job.