Bash Arrays

Internal

• bash

Indexed Arrays

External

• http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Arrays.html#Arrays
• http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/arrays.html

Overview

bash indexed arrays are 0-based and unidimensional. No explicit declaration is necessary if at least one element is initialized as described below:

Initialization

Individual elements are initialized by using ${var-name[index]}=value notation:

a[0]="something"

Reference

Element arrays can be referenced with ${var-name[index]} notation:

echo ${a[0]}

If the array variable was not previously declared, or if the specific element was not initialized, or the array variable does not exist, the reference attempt will return the blank string.