LinuxQuestions.org - Generating iteratable arrays in bash

- Programming (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/)

- - Generating iteratable arrays in bash (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/generating-iteratable-arrays-in-bash-353140/)

Generating iteratable arrays in bash

I am wanting a command to populate an array with its output, for example:

slocate newfile > An_Array

Which would then allow a second command to iterate through An_Array, such as:

Code:

for x in An_Array

do

    rm -ir

done

This should pass the output of slocate to a list which then when iterated through will allow the user to opt to remove a specified file. At least, that's the theory!! :)

Any thoughts?

So your looking for something like?

Code:

#!/bin/sh



until [ -z $1 ]; do

  An_Array[i++]=$1

  shift

done



for(( j = 0; j < i; ++j )); do

    echo "Element $j = ${An_Array[j]}"

done

This would produce:

Code:

$ ./test One two three

Element 0 = One

Element 1 = two

Element 2 = three

Hmmm ... looks about right. Let me test it out and get back to you.

Thanx

Thanks for the script leonscape. The mechanics seem okay, but now I need to figure out how to get the output of slocate to be loaded into An_Array. I tried slocate myfile_name > An_Array which gave me a text file of the output of slocate ... which was not what I had in mind.

How could I:
(a) accept input from a user (i.e. what file they want to slocate), and
(b) dynamically populate an array with the output of slocate so that it can be iterated over?

Thanks

$1 works for command line inputs. So that is what the user could enter to the command. i think the easiest way of iterating the slocate return is to push it out to a temp file and read it into an array. Not being a Bash guru, i couldn't think of a way to redirect a command output to an array. So what I would end up with is:

Code:

#!/bin/sh



# The command name, So it doesn't matter if the script gets renamed.

CMD=`basename $0`



# the help screen, done like this so you can expand the explanation 

# between cat and end.

help_screen ()

{

cat <<END

    Usage: $CMD files..."

END

exit

}



# check theres something to process

if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then

    help_screen

fi



echo > tmpfile #Truncate the file



# doesn't matter how many they request appends the lot

# to one file.

until [ -z $1 ]; do

  slocate $1 >> tmpfile

  shift

done



# Now reads that file into an array

An_Array=( $(cat tmpfile) )



#now prints out the whole file

for i in $(seq 0 $((${#An_Array[@]} - 1))); do

  echo "${An_Array[$i]}"

done