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answerSeeker
Asked: 2017-05-15 19:09:18 +0800 CST

How can I use arrays in bash? [duplicate]

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I'm trying this in 16.04 but it is not working. Taken from: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8880633/2771043.

Edit: Apparently this works if you copy and past it to a terminal but not on a script file. How do I get it to work the same way on a .sh file?

declare -a arr=("element1" "element2" "element3")

for i in "${arr[@]}"
do
   echo "$i"
done

I get

old.sh: 2: old.sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

If I take out the brackets, I get 

old.sh: 2: old.sh: declare: not found
old.sh: 5: old.sh: Bad substitution
bash

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It works if you add the crunchbang line at the head end of the script to force the shell interpreter to use the bash syntax, and not default to the old sh syntax. (It works for me also without the crunchbang line, but for many reasons it is a good idea to use a crunchbang line.)

    I created the file arraytest.

    #!/bin/bash

declare -a arr=("element1" "element2" "element3")

for i in "${arr[@]}"
do
   echo "$i"
done

    Then I made it executable and executed it.

    chmod ugo+x arraytest

$ ./arraytest
element1
element2
element3
    • 4