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Asked: 2026-06-08T12:02:42+00:00

I have a script; it needs to use bash’s associative arrays (trust me on

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I have a script; it needs to use bash’s associative arrays (trust me on that one).

It needs to run on normal machines, as well as a certain additional machine that has /bin/bash 3.2.

It works fine if I declare the interpreter to be /opt/userwriteablefolder/bin/bash4, the location of bash 4.2 that I put there.. but it then only works on that machine.

I would like to have a test at the beginning of my script that checks what the interpreting shell is, and if it’s bash3.2, calls bash4 $0 $@. The problem is that I can’t figure out any way to determine what the interpreting shell is. I would really rather not do a $HOSTNAME based decision, but that will work if necessary (It’s also awkward, because it needs to pass a “we’ve done this already” flag).

For a couple reasons, “Just have two scripts” is not a good solution.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You can check which interpreter is used by looking at $SHELL, which contains the full path to the shell executable (ex. /bin/bash)

    Then, if it is Bash, you can check the Bash version in various ways:

    • ${BASH_VERSINFO[*]} — an array of version components, e.g. (4 1 5 1 release x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
    • ${BASH_VERSION} — a string version, e.g. 4.1.5(1)-release
    • And of course, "$0" --version
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