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This is close, but I'm having trouble referencing the second array in my loop. What should the syntax look like? $item is returning "1" instead of "a,b,c or d"

colors=( teal purple pink red green darkblue skyblue )
teal=( a b c d )


for color in ${colors[@]}
do
    echo $color

    for item in ${#{$color}[@]}
    do
        echo $item
    done

done
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1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You can do something like this:

mkt.sh 

colors=( teal purple pink red green darkblue skyblue )
teal=( a b c d )
purple=( x y z )

for color in ${colors[@]}
do
    echo color: $color

    declare -a 'vals=("${'"$color"'[@]}")'
    for item in ${vals[@]}
    do
        echo "-- $item"
    done
done

Running:

$ ./mkt.sh 
color: teal
-- a
-- b
-- c
-- d
color: purple
-- x
-- y
-- z
color: pink
color: red
color: green
color: darkblue
color: skyblue
$

Credits:

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Thanks so much icyrock, I follow your code. – Red Labor Apr 4 at 0:09
Sure thing, glad to help! – icyrock.com Apr 4 at 0:10
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