Hi,
For one of my programs, I need to have a hashtable as in Perl. Unfortunately shell doesnt provide any variable like hash. Is there anyway/trick, I could implement a hash in shell (using shell scripts/sed/awk).
JP
You could fake a hash using a pseudo-associative array. AWK provides this facility but it involves a little work in the ksh, for example:
Storing a value using a variable as a key:
where n="TEST"
typeset val_${n}=3
the value of ${val_TEST} will be seen to be 3, checked using set or env. Reading the value is a little trickier. It can be performed directly if the key name is constant:
echo "${val_TEST}"
However, to use a variable key, perform the following:
echo "$(eval echo \$val_${n})"
This acts as a pointer and should then return 3.
In order to run the hash, set or env can be used along with a pattern matching utility, i.e. grep or egrep, especially if the variable name prefix is very specific (i.e. val_).