Array question

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1

I have attempted to create an array consisting of two items: #0 and #1.
I am able to print the two items corrctly:

arr=(hello "my name is")
echo ${arr[0]}
hello
echo ${arr[1]}
my name is

However, when I try to run a for loop to print both objects:

for i in ${arr
[*]}
do
echo $i
done

I get:

hello
my
name
is

If there are two objects, why is the output on four lines? How do I loop on two lines?

My goal is to get:

hello
my name is
2

The problem is the behavior of the "for"-loop in connection with an obvious misunderstanding about what "${arr[*]}" means.

The subscript "*" in an array denotes ALL array elements and it is expanded before the for-loop is executed. Therefore this is what the shell "sees":

for i in ${arr[*]}            # original line, begin of parsing process
for i in hello my name is     # after expanding the variables

Now, "$i" is assigned one word each pass of the for-loop because this is how this kind of loop behaves. There are two possibilities to correct this:

  1. Use a while-loop instead:
echo ${arr[*]} | while read a ; do
     echo $a
done
  1. Instead of using this faulty way of expanding the array count elements:
i=1
for i in {1..${#arr[*]}} ; do
     echo ${arr[$i]}
done

"${#arrayname[*]}" expands to the number of elements in your array (instead of the whole array itself), in your case: 2.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

3

try also:

arr=(hello "my name is")

echo ${arr[0]}
echo ${arr[1]}

for i in "${arr[@]}"
do
  echo $i
done