How to copy an array in Bash?

Question

I have an array of applications, initialized like this:

depends=$(cat ~/Depends.txt)

When I try to parse the list and copy it to a new arra

Answer 1

The solutions given in the other answers won't work for associative arrays, or for arrays with non-contiguous indices. Here are is a more general solution:

declare -A arr=([this]=hello [\'that\']=world [theother]='and "goodbye"!')
temp=$(declare -p arr)
eval "${temp/arr=/newarr=}"

diff <(echo "$temp") <(declare -p newarr | sed 's/newarr=/arr=/')
# no output

And another:

declare -A arr=([this]=hello [\'that\']=world [theother]='and "goodbye"!')
declare -A newarr
for idx in "${!arr[@]}"; do
    newarr[$idx]=${arr[$idx]}
done

diff <(echo "$temp") <(declare -p newarr | sed 's/newarr=/arr=/')
# no output