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up vote 3 down vote favorite

I want to define a hash list in bash (version 4.3.30):

  • 4 gateways
  • each gateway has
    • an IP
    • an IP6
    • a name
    • ...

and I want to walk through this list in a loop and do stuff to each gateway.

I searched a lot, but it seems, bash doesn't support multidimensional arrays?

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1 Answer 1

up vote 8 down vote accepted

bash doesn't have multi-dimensional arrays yet. Only ksh93 does.

Here, you can use a csv-like structure and you don't even need to use arrays:

#! /bin/sh -
gws="\
foo,1.1.1.12,1::1
blah,2.2.2.2,2::2"

while IFS=, read name ip4 ip6; do
  echo something with "$name" "$ip4"...
done << E
$gws
E

(you don't even need bash)

With ksh93:

gws=(
  (name=foo  ip4=1.1.1.1 ip6=1::1)
  (name=blah ip4=2.2.2.2 ip6=1::2)
)

printf '%s\n' "${gws[0].name}"
share|improve this answer
    
Can you fill in the << E $gws E in the beginning somehow? –  rubo77 Jul 23 at 9:42
    
@rubo77, no, but you could use a function if you want to make it neater. –  Stéphane Chazelas Jul 23 at 9:46
    
@rubo77, I just meant process_gws() while...; done; process_gws <<... which you may find neater. That's all cosmetic considerations. –  Stéphane Chazelas Jul 23 at 10:14
    
It should work fine as is. Bash lets you use <<< "$gws" to redirect from a string, instead of needing a multi-line here-document. But either construct should work in a function. –  Peter Cordes Jul 23 at 10:16
    
@rubo77, in that case, the while loop runs in a subshell. –  Stéphane Chazelas Jul 23 at 11:02

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