How to initiate array element to 0 in bash?

Question

declare -a MY_ARRAY=()

Does the declaration of array in this way in bash will initiate all the array elements to 0?

If not, How to initiate

Answer 1

Your example will declare/initialize an empty array.

If you want to initialize array members, you do something like this:

declare -a MY_ARRAY=(0 0 0 0) # this initializes an array with four members

If you want to initialize an array with 100 members, you can do this:

declare -a MY_ARRAY=( $(for i in {1..100}; do echo 0; done) )

Keep in mind that arrays in bash are not fixed length (nor do indices have to be consecutive). Therefore you can't initialize all members of the array unless you know what the number should be.