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I am a newbie with shell scripts and I learnt a lot today. This is an extension to this question Assigning values printed by PHP CLI to shell variables

I got the solution to read a variable in my shell script. Now how to manipulate an array? If I prepare an array in my PHP code and print it, and echo in my shell, it displays Array. How to access that array in the shell script? I tried the solution given in how to manipulate array in shell script

With the following code:-
PHP code 

$neededConstants = array("BASE_PATH","db_host","db_name","db_user","db_pass");

$associativeArray = array();
foreach($neededConstants as $each)
{
    $associativeArray[$each] = constant($each);
}

print $associativeArray;

Shell code

function getConfigVals()
{
    php $PWD'/developer.php'
}




cd ..
PROJECT_ROOT=$PWD
cd developer

# func1 parameters: a b
result=$(getConfigVals)

for((cnt=0;cnt<${#result};cnt++))
do
    echo ${result[$cnt]}" - "$cnt
done

I get this output:-

Array - 0
 - 1
 - 2
 - 3
 - 4

Whereas I want to get this:-

Array
      BASE_PATH - /path/to/project
      db_host - localhost 
      db_name - database
      db_user - root 
      db_pass - root
share|improve this question

3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

You should debug your PHP script first to produce the valid array content, code

print $associativeArray;

will just get you the following output:

$ php test.php 
Array

You can simply print the associative array in a foreach loop:

foreach ( $associativeArray as $key=>$val ){
    echo "$key:$val\n";
}

giving a list of variable names + content separated by ':'

$ php test.php 
BASE_PATH:1
db_host:2
db_name:3
db_user:4
db_pass:5

As for the shell script, I suggest using simple and understandable shell constructs and then get to the advanced ones (like ${#result}) to use them correctly.

I have tried the following bash script to get the variables from PHP script output to shell script:

# set the field separator for read comand
IFS=":"

# parse php script output by read command
php $PWD'/test.php' | while read -r key val; do
    echo "$key = $val"
done
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Thanks and +1 for the suggestion of using simple and understandable shell constructs first and then get to the advanced ones – Sandeepan Nath Dec 8 '10 at 7:31
up vote 1 down vote

With bash4, you can use mapfile to populate an array and process substitution to feed it:

mapfile -t array < <( your_command )

Then you can go through the array with:

for line in "${array[@]}"

Or use indices:

for i in "${#array[@]}"
do
   : use "${array[i]}"
done
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up vote 0 down vote

You don't say what shell you're using, but assuming it's one that supports arrays:

result=($(getConfigVals))    # you need to create an array before you can ...

for((cnt=0;cnt<${#result};cnt++))
do
    echo ${result[$cnt]}" - "$cnt    # ... access it using a subscript
done

This is going to be an indexed array, rather than an associative array. While associative arrays are supported in Bash 4, you'll need to use a loop similar to the one in Martin Kosek's answer for assignment if you want to use them.

share|improve this answer
I am using linux bash shell – Sandeepan Nath Dec 8 '10 at 7:32
@Sandeepan Nath: My answer applies to Bash. – Dennis Williamson Dec 8 '10 at 10:38

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