I want to store (and retrieve, of course) Bash's associative arrays and am looking for a simple way to do that.
I know that it is possible to do it using a look over all keys:
for key in "${!arr[@]}"
do
echo "$key ${arr[$key]}"
done
Retrieving it could also be done in a loop:
declare -A arr
while read key value
do
arr[$key]=$value
done < store
But I also see that set
will print a version of the array in this style:
arr=([key1]="value1" [key2]="value2" )
(Unfortunately along with all other shell variables.)
Is there a simpler way for storing and retrieving an associative array than my proposed loop?
To save to a file:
declare -p arr > saved.sh
(You can also use typeset
instead of declare
if you prefer.)
To load from the file:
source saved.sh