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

In bash, we use

declare -A name_of_dictonary_variable

so that Bash understands it is a dictionary.

For e.g. you want to create sounds dictionary then,

declare -A sounds

sounds[dog]="Bark"

sounds[wolf]="Howl"

where dog and wolf are "keys", and Bark and Howl are "values".

You can access all values using : echo ${sounds[@]} OR echo ${sounds[*]}

You can access all keys only using: echo ${!sounds[@]}

And if you want any value for a particular key, you can use:

${sounds[dog]}

this will give you value (Bark) for key (Dog).