Question

I am new in Shell Scripting, however i am friendly with Java Maps. I Just wanted to know that how can i use Map facility in Shell Scripting. Below is the facility i need to use in shell-

    HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>> users = new HashMap<String, ArrayList<String>>();

    String username = "test_user1";
    String address = "test_user1_address";
    String emailId = "test_user1_emailId";

    ArrayList<String> values = new ArrayList<String>();
    values.add(address);
    values.add(emailId);

    users.put(username, values);

    String anotherUser = "test_user2";

    if (users.containsKey(anotherUser)) {
        System.out.println("Do some stuff here");
    }

In short, i want to use a Map, which has String as key, either Vector or ArrayList as value (otherwise i have live with Arrays instead of ArrayList and manually take care of indexes) , put method to insert and one more method to check the presence of the key in the existing Map.

The above code is a sample code.
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

bash does not support nested structures like this. Either use separate variables for each array, or use something more capable such as Python.