Bash -v test doesn’t work with associative arrays in 4.3.46

Shells with associative arrays

Some modern shells provide associative arrays: ksh93, bash ≥4, zsh. In ksh93 and bash, if a is an associative array, then "${!a[@]}" is the array of its keys:

for k in "${!a[@]}"; do
  echo "$k -> ${a[$k]}"
done

In zsh, that syntax only works in ksh emulation mode. Otherwise you have to use zsh's native syntax:

for k in "${(@k)a}"; do
  echo "$k -> $a[$k]"
done

${(k)a} also works if a does not have an empty key.

In zsh, you could also loop on both keys and values at the same time:

for k v ("${(@kv)a}") echo "$k -> $v"

Shells without associative arrays

Emulating associative arrays in shells that don't have them is a lot more work. If you need associative arrays, it's probably time to bring in a bigger tool, such as ksh93 or Perl.

If you do need associative arrays in a mere POSIX shell, here's a way to simulate them, when keys are restricted to contain only the characters 0-9A-Z_a-z (ASCII digits, letters and underscore). Under this assumption, keys can be used as part of variable names. The functions below act on an array identified by a naming prefix, the “stem”, which must not contain two consecutive underscores.

## ainit STEM
## Declare an empty associative array named STEM.
ainit () {
  eval "__aa__${1}=' '"
}
## akeys STEM
## List the keys in the associatve array named STEM.
akeys () {
  eval "echo \"\$__aa__${1}\""
}
## aget STEM KEY VAR
## Set VAR to the value of KEY in the associative array named STEM.
## If KEY is not present, unset VAR.
aget () {
  eval "unset $3
        case \$__aa__${1} in
          *\" $2 \"*) $3=\$__aa__${1}__$2;;
        esac"
}
## aset STEM KEY VALUE
## Set KEY to VALUE in the associative array named STEM.
aset () {
  eval "__aa__${1}__${2}=\$3
        case \$__aa__${1} in
          *\" $2 \"*) :;;
          *) __aa__${1}=\"\${__aa__${1}}$2 \";;
        esac"
}
## aunset STEM KEY
## Remove KEY from the associative array named STEM.
aunset () {
  eval "unset __aa__${1}__${2}
        case \$__aa__${1} in
          *\" $2 \"*) __aa__${1}=\"\${__aa__${1}%%* $2 } \${__aa__${1}#* $2 }\";;
        esac"
}

(Warning, untested code. Error detection for syntactically invalid stems and keys is not provided.)

First, create an array with the parameters.

Then, store the array string value (found with declare -p) at parameters, and recover and use it as an actual array later on like in:

#!/bin/bash

programs=( "ls" "echo" )
declare -A parameters

arrayTmp=("-l" "/tmp/foo bar")
parameters["ls"]="`declare -p arrayTmp |sed -r "s,[^=]*='(.*)'$,\1,"`"

parameters["echo"]="Hello"

for program in "${programs[@]}";do
    echo "PROGRAM: $program"
    declare -a arrayTmp="${parameters[$program]}"
    $program "${arrayTmp[@]}"
    arrayTmp=()
done