Array in Bash Not Found

Question

I am trying to declare an array in bash, but when the code is run it says it cannot find the array. I have tried to write out the declaration of the array in several different ways, but it seems no matter how I try to declare it I cannot get it to work. I originally tried to declare it as such:

candidate[1]= 0
candidate[2]= 0
candidate[3]= 0

The error messages that are returned are:

votecalculation.sh: 13: candidate[1]=: not found
votecalculation.sh: 14: candidate[2]=: not found
votecalculation.sh: 15: candidate[3]=: not found

After this I tried another solution I found online:

ARRAY=( 'can1' 'can2' 'can3' )

When that is used it returns this error:

votecalculation.sh: 12: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

I am new to Bash and am getting really confused about arrays. Is there some specific way I need to declare an array or am I just going about it completely wrong?

Answer 1

It probably doesn't like the space after the equals sign.

Some other ideas:

• Be sure that you're actually using bash to run your script, and not sh/dash.

• You can explicitly declare a variable to be an array using declare -a varname

Answer 2

 #!/bin/bash

 myarray[0]=hello
 myarray[1]=world

 echo "${myarray[0]}"
 echo "${myarray[1]}"

save that to helloworld.bash and chmod +x the file.

execute using ./helloword.bash

Answer 3

Try removing the space:

candidate[1]=0
candidate[2]=0

and so on. I'm not an expert in this area myself but I think bash needs to recognize the whole assignment expression as one word, so you can't have spaces in it.

Answer 4

I had the same problem. I tried to call my script with ./my_script.s, with . ./my_script.sh and I also tried with "bash my_script.sh" and "sh my_script.sh". I always got the same message : "my_array[1]: command not found".

Then I saw Chris AtLee's comment about bash not liking the space after the equal sign.

The exact lines in my code before

my_array[1] = 34
my_array[2] = 57

I removed the spaces before and after the equal signs.

my_array[1]=34
my_array[2]=57

Then, I simply tried the following in the terminal and didn't have the error message anymore.

$ my_script.sh

NOTE: Bash does not like spaces in variable definition !

Hope this helps other beginners like me !

Answer 5

In the first one there should be no spaces after the equal signs.

candidate[1]=0
candidate[2]=0
candidate[3]=0

The second one looks correct. Are you sure your shell is bash? Try adding a proper hash-bang line to the top of your script if you don't already have it:

#!/bin/bash
ARRAY=( 'can1' 'can2' 'can3' )

Answer 6

If you have the correct shebang and you chmod +x scriptname, you don't need to start the script using bash scriptname - you can just use ./scriptname or if the directory it's in is in your PATH, then you can start it using simply scriptname.

If you have #!/bin/bash as your shebang and run sh scriptname then the shebang is overridden by the choice of shell on the command line.

There's no special meaning to having .sh or .bash at the end of the filename. It's just a matter of style or preference that some people like since it's intended to indicate the type of script (but only to the user - not to the system).

Answer 7

Here's a sample how to define and iterate over a bash array

#!/bin/bash
test_array=(el1 el2 el3)
for value in "${test_array[@]}";
do
  echo "$value"
done

Output:

el1
el2
el3

Answer 8

May be, bad declaration of shebang... Be sure, use #!/bin/bash as shebang