Multi-Dimensional Arrays in Bash

Originally published January 29, 2019 @ 12:58 am

Bash does not support multi-dimensional arrays, but there is a way to imitate this functionality, if you absolutely have to.

As a quick example, here’s a data table representing a two-dimensional array.

And here’s the graphical representation of this two-dimensional array with the values you would expect for each y[x] position:

And here’s how we do it:

a=('a1=(n1 n2 n3)' 'a2=(m1 m2 m3)')
for i in "${a[@]}"; do eval "${i}"; done
x=0;y=2;echo "${a1[${x}]}${a2[${y}]}"

What about a three-dimensional array? Not gonna draw you a cubical table, but here’s the code:

a=('a1=(n1 n2 n3)' 'a2=(m1 m2 m3)' 'a3=(o1 o2 o3)')
for i in "${a[@]}"; do eval "${i}"; done
x=0;y=2;z=1;echo "${a1[${x}]}${a2[${y}]}${a3[${z}]}"

This may seem a bit awkward and laborious, compared to the proper programming languages, but this can be extremely useful.

Think about it: a three-dimensional array holding data like timestamps, CPU I/O wait time, and network bandwidth utilization. This would be perfect for analyzing a CPU bottleneck that you suspect has something to do with time of day and network activity.