Bash Parse Arrays From Config File

with bash v4, using associative arrays, store the properties from the config file as actual bash variables:

$ while read line; do     if [[ $line =~ ^"["(.+)"]"$ ]]; then         arrname=${BASH_REMATCH[1]}        declare -A $arrname    elif [[ $line =~ ^([_[:alpha:]][_[:alnum:]]*)"="(.*) ]]; then         declare ${arrname}[${BASH_REMATCH[1]}]="${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"    fidone < config.conf$ echo ${array0[value1]}asdf$ echo ${array1[value2]}5678$ for i in "${!array0[@]}"; do echo "$i => ${array0[$i]}"; donevalue1 => asdfvalue2 => jkl$ for i in "${!array1[@]}"; do echo "$i => ${array1[$i]}"; donevalue1 => 1234value2 => 5678

One eval-free, 100% pure Bash possibility:

#!/bin/bashdie() {   printf >&2 "%s\n" "$@"   exit 1}aryname=''linenb=0while read line; do   ((++linenb))   if [[ $line =~ ^[[:space:]]*$ ]]; then      continue   elif [[ $line =~ ^\[([[:alpha:]][[:alnum:]]*)\]$ ]]; then      aryname=${BASH_REMATCH[1]}      declare -A $aryname   elif [[ $line =~ ^([^=]+)=(.*)$ ]]; then      [[ -n aryname ]] || die "*** Error line $linenb: no array name defined"      printf -v ${aryname}["${BASH_REMATCH[1]}"] "%s" "${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"   else      die "*** Error line $linenb: $line"   fidone

Reads on standard input. If you want to read from a file, change the done by:

done < "filename"

Lines of the form

space and funnŷ sÿmbòl=value that will have an equal sign: look = it's funny

are allowed

You can declare array in bash scripts with

declare -a <array_name>=(value1 value2 value 3)

Then you can use them like this

echo ${<array_name>[index]}

Edit:

Ok, to construct arrays from config file. I would recommend to have a different file for each array you would like to create.

So here are the steps

1.config file (create a file and place your values in it)

100200300

2.script file (read values from file and prepare an array)

    array=()    #setup array    while IFS=$'\n' read -a config    do      array+=(${config})    done < file_name    #access values    echo ${array[0]}    echo ${array[1]}

IFS denotes the delimiter
-a specifies the array name you want to extract to, so that you can access them inside the while loop.