Bash Arrays

If you have ever done any programming you are probably already familiar with arrays. But just in case that you are not a developer, unlike variables, arrays can hold several values under one name.

You can initialize an array by assigning values devided by space and enclosed in (). Example:

my_array=("value 1" "value 2" "value 3" "value 4")

To access the elements in the array, you need to reference them by their numeric index.

Note: keep in mind that you need to use curly brackets.

• Access a single element, this would output: value 2

echo ${my_array[1]}

• This would return the last element: value 4

echo ${my_array[-1]}

• This would output the total number of elements in the array, in our case it is 4:

echo ${my_array[@]}