I'm writing a bash script to analyse some files. In a first iteration I create associative arrays with word counts for each category that is analysed. These categories are not known in advance so the names of these associative arrays are variable but all with the same prefix count_$category
. The associative arrays have a word as key and its occurrence count in that category as value.
After all files are analysed, I have to summarise the results for each category. I can iterate over the variable names using ${count_*}
but how can I access the associative arrays behind those variable names? For each associative array (each count_*
variable) I should iterate over the words and their counts.
I have already tried with indirect access like this but it doesn't work:
for categorycount in ${count_*} # categorycount now holds the name of the associative array variable for each category
do
array=${!categorycount}
for word in ${!array[@]}
do
echo "$word occurred ${array[$word]} times"
done
done
See Question&Answers more detail:os