1. How can I read a file (data stream, variable) line-by-line (and/or field-by-field)?

Don't try to use "for". Use a while loop and the read command. Here is the basic template; there are many variations to discuss:

   1 while IFS= read -r line; do
   2   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   3 done < "$file"

line is a variable name, chosen by you. You can use any valid shell variable name(s) there; see field splitting below.

< "$file" redirects the loop's input from a file whose name is stored in a variable; see source selection below.

If you want to read lines from a file into an array, see FAQ 5.

1.1. Field splitting, whitespace trimming, and other input processing

The -r option to read prevents backslash interpretation (usually used as a backslash newline pair, to continue over multiple lines or to escape the delimiters). Without this option, any unescaped backslashes in the input will be discarded. You should almost always use the -r option with read.

The most common exception to this rule is when -e is used, which uses Readline to obtain the line from an interactive shell. In that case, tab completion will add backslashes to escape spaces and such, and you do not want them to be literally included in the variable. This would never be used when reading anything line-by-line, though, and -r should always be used when doing so.

By default, read modifies each line read, by removing all leading and trailing whitespace characters (spaces and tabs, if present in IFS). If that is not desired, the IFS variable may be cleared, as in the example above. If you want the trimming, leave IFS alone:

   1 # Leading/trailing whitespace trimming.
   2 while read -r line; do
   3   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   4 done < "$file"

If you want to operate on individual fields within each line, you may supply additional variables to read:

   1 # Input file has 3 columns separated by white space (space or tab characters only).
   2 while read -r first_name last_name phone; do
   3   # Only print the last name (second column)
   4   printf '%s\n' "$last_name"
   5 done < "$file"

If the field delimiters are not whitespace, you can set IFS (internal field separator):

   1 # Extract the username and its shell from /etc/passwd:
   2 while IFS=: read -r user pass uid gid gecos home shell; do
   3   printf '%s: %s\n' "$user" "$shell"
   4 done < /etc/passwd

For tab-delimited files, use IFS=$'\t' though beware that multiple tab characters in the input will be considered as one delimiter (and the Ksh93/Zsh IFS=$'\t\t' workaround won't work in Bash).

You do not necessarily need to know how many fields each line of input contains. If you supply more variables than there are fields, the extra variables will be empty. If you supply fewer, the last variable gets "all the rest" of the fields after the preceding ones are satisfied. For example,

   1 # Bash
   2 read -r first last junk <<< 'Bob Smith 123 Main Street Elk Grove Iowa 123-555-6789'
   3 
   4 # first will contain "Bob", and last will contain "Smith".
   5 # junk holds everything else.

Some people use the throwaway variable _ as a "junk variable" to ignore fields. It (or indeed any variable) can also be used more than once in a single read command, if we don't care what goes into it:

   1 # Bash
   2 read -r _ _ first middle last _ <<< "$record"
   3 
   4 # We skip the first two fields, then read the next three.
   5 # Remember, the final _ can absorb any number of fields.
   6 # It doesn't need to be repeated there.

Note that this usage of _ is only guaranteed to work in Bash. Many other shells use _ for other purposes that will at best cause this to not have the desired effect, and can break the script entirely. It is better to choose a unique variable that isn't used elsewhere in the script, even though _ is a common Bash convention.

If avoiding comments starting with # is desired, you can simply skip them inside the loop:

   1 # Bash/
   2 while read -r line; do
   3   [[ $line = \#* ]] && continue
   4   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   5 done < "$file"

Above read removes leading and trailing spaces or tabs (assuming IFS hasn't been modified from its default value) so we just need to look for a # at the start of the (now trimmed) line. To preserve the spacing:

   1 # Bash
   2 while IFS= read -r line; do
   3   [[ $line = *([[:blank:]])\#* ]] && continue
   4   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   5 done < "$file"

In older versions of Bash, you'd need shopt -s extglob for the *(...) extended glob operator to be available. In newer versions they are always available for the =/==/!= pattern matching operator of the [[ ... ]] construct.

1.2. Input source selection

The redirection < "$file" tells the while loop to read from the file whose name is in the variable file. If you would prefer to use a literal pathname instead of a variable, you may do that as well. If your input source is the script's standard input, then you don't need any redirection at all.

If your input source is the contents of a variable/parameter, bash can iterate over its lines using a here string:

   1 while IFS= read -r line; do
   2   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   3 done <<< "$var"

The same can be done in any Bourne-type shell by using a "here document" (although read -r is POSIX, not Bourne):

   1 while IFS= read -r line; do
   2   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   3 done <<EOF
   4 $var
   5 EOF

One may also read from a command instead of a regular file:

   1 some command | while IFS= read -r line; do
   2   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   3 done

This method is especially useful for processing the output of find with a block of commands:

   1 find . -type f -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do
   2     dir=${file%/*} base=${file##*/}
   3     mv "$file" "$dir/${base// /_}"
   4 done

This reads one filename at a time from the find command and renames the file, replacing spaces with underscores in its base name.

Note the usage of -print0 in the find command, which uses NUL bytes as filename delimiters; and -d '' in the read command to instruct it to read all text into the file variable until it finds a NUL byte. By default, find and read delimit their input with newlines; however, since filenames can potentially contain newlines themselves, this default behaviour will split up those filenames at the newlines and cause the loop body to fail. Additionally it is necessary to set IFS to an empty string, because otherwise read would still strip leading and trailing whitespace (with the default value of IFS). See FAQ #20 for more details.

Using a pipe to send find's output into a while loop places the loop in a SubShell, which means any state changes you make (changing variables, cd, opening and closing files, etc.) will be lost when the loop finishes. To avoid that, you may use a ProcessSubstitution:

   1 linecount=0
   2 
   3 while IFS= read -r line; do
   4   linecount=$((linecount + 1))
   5 done < <(some command)
   6 
   7 printf 'total lines: %d\n' "$linecount"

See FAQ 24 for more discussion.

1.3. My text files are broken! They lack their final newlines!

If there are some characters after the last line in the file (or to put it differently, if the last line is not terminated by a newline character), then read will read it but return false, leaving the broken partial line in the read variable(s). You can process this after the loop:

   1 # Emulate cat
   2 while IFS= read -r line; do
   3   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   4 done < "$file"
   5 [[ -n $line ]] && printf %s "$line"

Or:

   1 # This does not work:
   2 printf 'line 1\ntruncated line 2' | while read -r line; do
   3   echo $line
   4 done
   5 
   6 # This does not work either:
   7 printf 'line 1\ntruncated line 2' | while IFS= read -r line; do
   8   echo "$line"
   9 done
  10 [[ $line ]] && echo -n "$line"
  11 
  12 # This works:
  13 printf 'line 1\ntruncated line 2' | {
  14   while IFS= read -r line; do
  15     echo "$line"
  16   done
  17   [[ $line ]] && echo "$line"
  18 }

The first example, beyond missing the after-loop test, is also missing quotes. See Quotes or Arguments for an explanation why. The Arguments page is an especially important read.

For a discussion of why the second example above does not work as expected, see FAQ #24.

Alternatively, you can simply add a logical OR to the while test:

   1 while IFS= read -r line || [[ -n $line ]]; do
   2   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   3 done < "$file"
   4 
   5 printf 'line 1\ntruncated line 2' | while IFS= read -r line || [[ -n $line ]]; do
   6   echo "$line"
   7 done

1.4. How to keep other commands from "eating" the input

Some commands greedily eat up all available data on standard input. The examples above do not take precautions against such programs. For example,

   1 while IFS= read -r line; do
   2   cat > ignoredfile
   3   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   4 done < "$file"

will only print the contents of the first line, with the remaining contents going to "ignoredfile", as cat slurps up all available input.

One workaround is to use a numeric FileDescriptor rather than standard input:

   1 # Bash
   2 while IFS= read -r -u 9 line; do
   3   cat > ignoredfile
   4   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   5 done 9< "$file"
   6 
   7 # Note that read -u is not portable to every shell.
   8 # Use a redirect to ensure it works in any POSIX compliant shell:
   9 while IFS= read -r line <&9; do
  10   cat > ignoredfile
  11   printf '%s\n' "$line"
  12 done 9< "$file"

Or:

   1 exec 9< "$file"
   2 while IFS= read -r line <&9; do
   3   cat > ignoredfile
   4   printf '%s\n' "$line"
   5 done
   6 exec 9<&-

This example will wait for the user to type something into the file ignoredfile at each iteration instead of eating up the loop input.

You might need this, for example, with mencoder which will accept user input if there is any, but will continue silently if there isn't. Other commands that act this way include ssh and ffmpeg. Additional workarounds for this are discussed in FAQ #89.

CategoryShell CategoryBashguide

2. How can I store the return value and/or output of a command in a variable?

Well, that depends on whether you want to store the command's output (either stdout, or stdout + stderr) or its exit status (0 to 255, with 0 typically meaning "success").

If you want to capture the output, you use command substitution:

   1 output=$(command)      # stdout only; stderr remains uncaptured
   2 output=$(command 2>&1) # both stdout and stderr will be captured

If you want the exit status, you use the special parameter $? after running the command:

   1 command
   2 status=$?

If you want both:

   1 output=$(command)
   2 status=$?

The assignment to output has no effect on command's exit status, which is still in $?.

If you don't actually want to store the exit status, but simply want to take an action upon success or failure, just use if:

   1 if command; then
   2     printf "it succeeded\n"
   3 else
   4     printf "it failed\n"
   5 fi

Or if you want to capture stdout as well as taking action on success/failure, without explicitly storing or checking $?:

   1 if output=$(command); then
   2     printf "it succeeded\n"
   3     ...

If you don't understand the difference between standard output and standard error. here is a brief demonstration. A sane command writes the output that you request to standard output (stdout) and only writes errors to standard error (stderr). Like so:

$ dig +short A mywiki.wooledge.org
199.231.184.176
$ ip=$(dig +short A mywiki.wooledge.org)
$ echo "{$ip}"
{199.231.184.176}

$ ls no-such-file
ls: cannot access 'no-such-file': No such file or directory
$ output=$(ls no-such-file)
ls: cannot access 'no-such-file': No such file or directory
$ echo "{$output}"
{}

In the example above, dig wrote output to stdout, which was captured in the ip variable. ls encountered an error, so it did not write anything to stdout. It wrote to stderr, which was not captured (because we didn't use 2>&1). The error message appeared directly on the terminal instead.

Some commands are not well-written, however, and may write information to the wrong place. You must keep an eye out for such commands, and work around them when necessary. For example:

$ vers=$(python --version)
Python 2.7.13
$ echo "{$vers}"
{}

Even though we specifically asked for the version number, python wrote it to stderr. Thus, it appeared on the terminal, and was not captured in the vers variable. You'd need to use 2>&1 here.

What if you want the exit status of one command from a pipeline? If you want the last command's status, no problem -- it's in $? just like before. If you want some other command's status, use the PIPESTATUS array (BASH only. In the case of Zsh, it's lower-cased pipestatus). Say you want the exit status of grep in the following:

   1 grep foo somelogfile | head -n5
   2 status=${PIPESTATUS[0]}

Bash 3.0 added a pipefail option as well, which can be used if you simply want to take action upon failure of the grep:

   1 set -o pipefail
   2 if ! grep foo somelogfile | head -n5; then
   3     printf "uh oh\n"
   4 fi

Now, some trickier stuff. Let's say you want only the stderr, but not stdout. Well, then first you have to decide where you do want stdout to go:

   1 output=$(command 2>&1 >/dev/null)  # Save stderr, discard stdout.
   2 output=$(command 2>&1 >/dev/tty)   # Save stderr, send stdout to the terminal.
   3 output=$(command 3>&2 2>&1 1>&3-)  # Save stderr, send stdout to script's stderr.

Since the last example may seem a bit confusing, here is the explanation. First, keep in mind that 1>&3- is equivalent to 1>&3 3>&-. So it will be easier to analyse the following sequence: $(... 3>&2 2>&1 1>&3 3>&-)

A little note: operation n>&m- is sometimes called moving FD m to FD n.

This way what the script writes to FD 2 (normally stderr) will be written to stdout because of the second redirection. What the script writes to FD 1 (normally stdout) will be written to stderr because of the first and third redirections. Stdout and stderr got replaced. Done.

It's possible, although considerably harder, to let stdout "fall through" to wherever it would've gone if there hadn't been any redirection. This involves "saving" the current value of stdout, so that it can be used inside the command substitution:

   1 exec 3>&1                    # Save the place that stdout (1) points to.
   2 output=$(command 2>&1 1>&3)  # Run command.  stderr is captured.
   3 exec 3>&-                    # Close FD #3.
   4 
   5 # Or this alternative, which captures stderr, letting stdout through:
   6 { output=$(command 2>&1 1>&3-) ;} 3>&1

In the last example above, note that 1>&3- duplicates FD 3 and stores a copy in FD 1, and then closes FD 3. It could also be written 1>&3 3>&-.

What you cannot do is capture stdout in one variable, and stderr in another, using only FD redirections. You must use a temporary file (or a named pipe) to achieve that one.

Well, you can use a horrible hack like:

   1 cmd() { curl -s -v http://www.google.fr; }
   2 
   3 result=$(
   4     { stdout=$(cmd) ; } 2>&1
   5     printf "this line is the separator\n"
   6     printf "%s\n" "$stdout"
   7 )
   8 var_out=${result#*this line is the separator$'\n'}
   9 var_err=${result%$'\n'this line is the separator*}

Obviously, this is not robust, because either the standard output or the standard error of the command could contain whatever separator string you employ.

And if you want the exit code of your cmd (here a modification in the case of if the cmd stdout nothing)

   1 cmd() { curl -s -v http://www.google.fr; }
   2 
   3 result=$(
   4     { stdout=$(cmd); returncode=$?; } 2>&1
   5     printf "this is the separator"
   6     printf "%s\n" "$stdout"
   7     exit "$returncode"
   8 )
   9 returncode=$?
  10 
  11 var_out=${result#*this is the separator}
  12 var_err=${result%this is the separator*}

Note: the original question read, "How can I store the return value of a command in a variable?" This was, verbatim, an actual question asked in #bash, ambiguity and all.

CategoryShell

3. How can I sort or compare files based on some metadata attribute (most recently modified, size, etc)?

The tempting solution is to use ls to output sorted filenames and operate on the results using e.g. awk. As usual, the ls approach cannot be made robust and should never be used in scripts due in part to the possibility of arbitrary characters (including newlines) present in filenames. Therefore, we need some other way to compare file metadata.

The most common requirements are to get the most or least recently modified, or largest or smallest files in a directory. Bash and all ksh variants can compare modification times (mtime) using the -nt and -ot operators of the conditional expression compound command:

   1 unset -v latest
   2 for file in "$dir"/*; do
   3   [[ $file -nt $latest ]] && latest=$file
   4 done

Or to find the oldest:

   1 unset -v oldest
   2 for file in "$dir"/*; do
   3   [[ -z $oldest || $file -ot $oldest ]] && oldest=$file
   4 done

Keep in mind that mtime on directories is that of the most recently added, removed, or renamed file in that directory. Also note that -nt and -ot are not specified by POSIX test, but many shells such as dash include them anyway. No bourne-like shell has analogous operators for comparing by atime or ctime, so one would need external utilities for that; however, it's nearly impossible to either produce output which can be safely parsed, or handle said output in a shell without using nonstandard features on both ends.

If the sorting criteria are different from "oldest or newest file by mtime", then GNU find and GNU sort may be used together to produce a sorted list of filenames + timestamps, delimited by NUL characters. This will operate recursively by default. GNU find's -maxdepth operator can limit the search depth to 1 directory if needed. Here are a few possibilities, which can be modified as necessary to use atime or ctime, or to sort in reverse order:

   1 # GNU find + GNU sort (To the precision possible on the given OS, but returns only one result)
   2 IFS= read -r -d '' latest \
   3   < <(find "$dir" -type f -printf '%T@ %p\0' | sort -znr)
   4 latest=${latest#* }   # remove timestamp + space

   1 # GNU find (To the nearest 1s, using "find -printf" format (%Ts).)
   2 while IFS= read -rd '' time; do
   3   IFS= read -rd '' 'latest[time]'
   4 done < <(find "$dir" -type f -printf '%Ts\0%p\0')
   5 latest=${latest[-1]}

One disadvantage to these approaches is that the entire list is sorted, whereas simply iterating through the list to find the minimum or maximum timestamp (assuming we want just one file) would be faster. However, depending on the size of the job, the algorithmic disadvantage of sorting may be negligible in comparison to the overhead of using a shell.

   1 # GNU find
   2 unset -v latest time
   3 while IFS= read -r -d '' line; do
   4   t=${line%% *} t=${t%.*}   # truncate fractional seconds
   5   ((t > time)) && { latest=${line#* } time=$t; }
   6 done < <(find "$dir" -type f -printf '%T@ %p\0')

Similar usage patterns work well on many kinds of filesystem meta-data. This example gets the largest file in each subdirectory recursively. This is a common pattern for performing a calculation on a collection of files in each directory.

Readers who are asking this question in order to rotate their log files may wish to look into logrotate(1) instead, if their operating system provides it.

CategoryShell

4. How can I check whether a directory is empty or not? How do I check for any *.mpg files, or count how many there are?

In Bash, you can count files safely and easily with the nullglob and dotglob options (which change the behaviour of globbing), and an array:

   1 # Bash
   2 shopt -s nullglob dotglob
   3 files=(*)
   4 (( ${#files[*]} )) || echo directory is empty
   5 shopt -u nullglob dotglob

See ArithmeticExpression for explanations of arithmetic commands.

Of course, you can use any glob you like instead of *. E.g. *.mpg or /my/music/*.mpg works fine.

Bear in mind that you need read permission on the directory, or it will always appear empty.

Some people dislike nullglob because having unmatched globs vanish altogether confuses programs like ls. Mistyping ls *.zip as ls *.zpi may cause every file to be displayed (for such cases consider setting failglob). Setting nullglob in a SubShell avoids accidentally changing its setting in the rest of the shell, at the price of an extra fork(). If you'd like to avoid having to set and unset shell options, you can pour it all into a SubShell:

   1 # Bash
   2 if (shopt -s nullglob dotglob; f=(*); ((! ${#f[@]}))); then
   3     echo "The current directory is empty."
   4 fi

The other disadvantage of this approach (besides the extra fork()) is that the array is lost when the subshell exits. If you planned to use those filenames later, then they have to be retrieved all over again.

Both of these examples expand a glob and store the resulting filenames into an array, and then check whether the number of elements in the array is 0. If you actually want to see how many files there are, just print the array's size instead of checking whether it's 0:

   1 # Bash
   2 shopt -s nullglob dotglob
   3 files=(*)
   4 echo "The current directory contains ${#files[@]} things."

You can also avoid the nullglob if you're OK with putting a non-existing filename in the array should no files match (instead of an empty array):

   1 # Bash
   2 shopt -s dotglob
   3 files=(*)
   4 if [[ -e ${files[0]} || -L ${files[0]} ]]; then
   5     echo "The current directory is not empty.  It contains:"
   6     printf '%s\n' "${files[@]}"
   7 fi

Without nullglob, if there are no files in the directory, the glob will be added as the only element in the array. Since * is a valid filename, we can't simply check whether the array contains a literal *. So instead, we check whether the thing in the array exists as a file. The -L test is required because -e fails if the first file is a dangling symlink.

If you don't care how many matching files there are and don't want to store the results in an array, you can use bash's compgen command. Unfortunately, due to a bug, you need to use a hack to make it recognize dotglob:

   1 # Bash
   2 if (shopt -s dotglob; : *; compgen -G '*' >/dev/null); then
   3     echo "The current directory is not empty."
   4 else
   5     echo "The current directory is empty."
   6 fi

Or you can use an extended glob:

   1 # Bash
   2 # The subshell may be avoided by enabling extglob for the whole script.
   3 # Doing so should be safe.
   4 if (shopt -s extglob; compgen -G '@(*|.[!.]*|..?*)' >/dev/null); then
   5     echo "The current directory is not empty."
   6 else
   7     echo "The current directory is empty."
   8 fi

You may also use failglob:

   1 # Bash
   2 if ( shopt -s dotglob failglob; : ./* ) 2>/dev/null; then
   3     echo "The current directory is not empty."
   4 else
   5     echo "The current directory is empty."
   6 fi

But, if you use failglob, note that the subshell is required; the following code does not work because failglob will raise a shell error that will cause bash to stop running the current command (including the if command, any outer compound command, and the entire function that ran this code if it is part of a function), so this will only work in the true case, the else branch will never run:

   1 # BROKEN!
   2 shopt -s dotglob failglob
   3 if { : ./* ;} 2> /dev/null; then
   4     echo "The current directory is not empty."
   5 else
   6     echo "The current directory is empty."
   7 fi

If you really want to avoid using the subshell and want to set failglob globally, you can either "catch" the shell error using command eval, or you can write a function that expands the glob indirectly:

   1 shopt -s dotglob failglob
   2 if command eval ': ./*' 2> /dev/null; then
   3     echo "The current directory is not empty."
   4 else
   5     echo "The current directory is empty."
   6 fi
   7 # or
   8 shopt -s dotglob failglob
   9 any_match () { local IFS=; { : $@ ;} 2> /dev/null ;}
  10 if any_match './*'; then
  11     echo "The current directory is not empty."
  12 else
  13     echo "The current directory is empty."
  14 fi

If your script needs to run with various non-Bash shell implementations, you can try using an external program like python, perl, or find; or you can try one of these. Note the "magic 3 globs"¹ as POSIX does not have the dotglob option.

   1 # POSIX
   2 # Clobbers the positional parameters, so make sure you don't need them.
   3 set -- * .[!.]* ..?*
   4 for f in "$@"; do
   5   if test -e "$f" || test -L "$f"; then
   6     echo "directory is non-empty"
   7     break
   8   fi
   9 done

At this stage, the positional parameters have been loaded with the contents of the directory, and can be used for processing.

If you just want to count files:

   1 # POSIX
   2 n=0
   3 for f in * .[!.]* ..?*; do
   4   if test -e "$f" || test -L "$f"; then n=$((n+1)); fi
   5 done
   6 printf "There are %d files.\n" "$n"

In the Bourne shell, it's even worse, because there is no test -e or test -L:

   1 # Bourne
   2 # (Of course, the system must have printf(1).)
   3 if test "`printf '%s %s %s' .* *`" = '. .. *' && test ! -f '*'
   4 then
   5     echo "directory is empty"
   6 fi

Of course, that fails if * exists as something other than a plain file (such as a directory or FIFO). The absence of a -e test really hurts.

Here is another solution using find:

   1 # POSIX
   2 # Print a single `.' for each file and count the number of characters printed.
   3 # This one will recurse.  If that is not desired, see below.
   4 n=$(find . -type f -exec printf %.0s. {} + | wc -m)
   5 printf "There are %d files.\n" "$n"

If you want it not to recurse, then you need to tell find not to recurse into directories. This gets really tricky and ugly. GNU find has a -maxdepth option to do it. With standard POSIX find, you're stuck with -prune. This is left as an exercise for the reader.

Never try to parse ls output. Even ls -A solutions can break (e.g. on HP-UX, if you are root, ls -A does the exact opposite of what it does if you're not root -- and no, I can't make up something that incredibly stupid).

In fact, one may wish to avoid the direct question altogether. Usually people want to know whether a directory is empty because they want to do something involving the files therein, etc. Look to the larger question. For example, one of these find-based examples may be an appropriate solution:

   1 # Bourne / POSIX
   2 find "$somedir" -type f -exec echo Found unexpected file {} \;
   3 find "$somedir" -prune -empty -exec printf '%s is empty.\n' {} \;  # GNU/BSD
   4 find "$somedir" -type d -empty -exec cp /my/configfile {} \;   # GNU/BSD

Most commonly, all that's really needed is something like this:

   1 # Bourne / POSIX
   2 for f in ./*.mpg; do
   3     test -f "$f" || continue
   4     mympgviewer "$f"
   5 done

In other words, the person asking the question may have thought an explicit empty-directory test was needed to avoid an error message like mympgviewer: ./*.mpg: No such file or directory when in fact no such test is required.

Support for a nullglob-like feature is inconsistent. In ksh93 it can be done on a per-pattern basis by prefixing with ~(N)²:

   1 # ksh93
   2 for f in ~(N)*; do
   3     ....
   4 done

CategoryShell

5. How can I use array variables?

This answer assumes you have a basic understanding of what arrays are. If you're new to this kind of programming, you may wish to start with the guide's explanation. This page is more thorough. See links at the bottom for more resources.

5.1. Intro

One-dimensional integer-indexed arrays are implemented by Bash, Zsh, and most KornShell varieties including AT&T ksh88 or later, mksh, and pdksh. Arrays are not specified by POSIX and not available in legacy or minimalist shells such as BourneShell and Dash. The POSIX-compatible shells that do feature arrays mostly agree on their basic principles, but there are some significant differences in the details. Advanced users of multiple shells should be sure to research the specifics. Ksh93, Zsh, and Bash 4.0 additionally have Associative Arrays (see also FAQ 6). This article focuses on indexed arrays as they are the most common type.

Basic syntax summary (for bash, math indexed arrays):

Here is a typical usage pattern featuring an array named host:

   1 # Bash
   2 
   3 # Assign the values "mickey", "minnie", and "goofy" to sequential indexes starting with zero.
   4 host=(mickey minnie goofy)
   5 
   6 # Iterate over the indexes of "host".
   7 for idx in "${!host[@]}"; do
   8     printf 'Host number %d is %s\n' "$idx" "${host[idx]}"
   9 done

"${!host[@]}" expands to the indices of of the host array, each as a separate word.

Indexed arrays are sparse, and elements may be inserted and deleted out of sequence.

   1 # Bash/ksh
   2 
   3 # Simple assignment syntax.
   4 arr[0]=0
   5 arr[2]=2
   6 arr[1]=1
   7 arr[42]='what was the question?'
   8 
   9 # Unset the second element of "arr"
  10 unset -v 'arr[2]'
  11 
  12 # Concatenate the values, to a single argument separated by spaces, and echo the result.
  13 echo "${arr[*]}"
  14 # outputs: "0 1 what was the question?"

It is good practice to write your code in such a way that it can handle sparse arrays, even if you think you can guarantee that there will never be any "holes". Only treat arrays as "lists" if you're certain, and the savings in complexity is significant enough for it to be justified.

5.2. Loading values into an array

Assigning one element at a time is simple, and portable:

   1 # Bash/ksh
   2 arr[0]=0
   3 arr[42]='the answer'

It's possible to assign multiple values to an array at once, but the syntax differs across shells. Bash supports only the arrName=(args...) syntax. ksh88 supports only the set -A arrName -- args... syntax. ksh93, mksh, and zsh support both. There are subtle differences in both methods between all of these shells if you look closely.

   1 # Bash, ksh93, mksh, zsh
   2 array=(zero one two three four)

   1 # ksh88/93, mksh, zsh
   2 set -A array -- zero one two three four

When initializing in this way, the first index will be 0 unless a different index is specified.

With compound assignment, the space between the parentheses is evaluated in the same way as the arguments to a command, including pathname expansion and WordSplitting. Any type of expansion or substitution may be used. All the usual quoting rules apply within.

   1 # Bash/ksh93
   2 oggs=(*.ogg)

With ksh88-style assignment using set, the arguments are just ordinary arguments to a command.

   1 # Korn
   2 set -A oggs -- *.ogg

   1 # Bash (brace expansion requires 3.0 or higher)
   2 homeDirs=(~{,root}) # brace expansion occurs in a different order in ksh, so this is bash-only.
   3 letters=({a..z})    # Not all shells with sequence-expansion can use letters.