CODEWITHSUNDEEP
arraysbashfor-loopassociative-array
contributor1
contributor1

Reputation: 33

Spaces in Associative Array Keys while looping through multiple arrays in Bash

I am having a bit of trouble while looping through multiple associative arrays in bash.

Here is the code I'm running: (stripped of the actual information)

arrays=("arrayone" "arraytwo")
declare -A arrayone=(["one"]=1 ["two"]=2)
declare -A arraytwo=(["text with spaces"]=value ["more text with spaces"]=differentvalue)
for array in ${arrays[*]} 
 do 
 for key in $(eval echo $\{'!'$array[@]\})   
       do 
       echo "$key"
       done
 done

This works perfectly fine until I run into a key value that has spaces in it. No matter what I do, I cannot get items with spaces to be treated correctly.

I would appreciate any ideas you have on how to get this working. If there is, a better way to do this, I'd be happy to hear it. I don't mind scratching this and starting over. It's just the best I've been able to come up with so far.

Thanks!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 797

Answers (1)

kojiro
kojiro

Reputation: 77137

Bash added the nameref attribute in 4.3. It allows you to make a name specifically a reference to another. In your case, you would do

declare -A assoc_one=(["one"]=1 ["two"]=2)
declare -A assoc_two=(["text with spaces"]=value ["more text with spaces"]=differentvalue)
declare -n array # Make it a nameref
for array in "${!assoc_@}"; do 
    for key in "${!array[@]}"; do
        echo "'$key'"
    done
done

and you get

'one'
'two'
'text with spaces'
'more text with spaces'

Names were changed to protect the idioms. I mean, I changed the array names so I could do "${!assoc_@}" without making array a special case.

Upvotes: 4

Related Questions