Is there a way to create key-value pairs in Bash script?

Question

I am trying to create a dictionary of key value pair using Bash script. I am trying using this logic:

declare -d dictionary
defaults write \"$dictionary\" ke         


        

Answer 1

If you can use a simple delimiter, a very simple oneliner is this:

for i in a,b c_s,d ; do 
  KEY=${i%,*};
  VAL=${i#*,};
  echo $KEY" XX "$VAL;
done

Hereby i is filled with character sequences like "a,b" and "c_s,d". each separated by spaces. After the do we use parameter substitution to extract the part before the comma , and the part after it.