How to define hash tables in Bash?

Question

What is the equivalent of Python dictionaries but in Bash (should work across OS X and Linux).

Answer 1

I agree with @lhunath and others that the associative array are the way to go with Bash 4. If you are stuck to Bash 3 (OSX, old distros that you cannot update) you can use also expr, which should be everywhere, a string and regular expressions. I like it especially when the dictionary is not too big.

1. Choose 2 separators that you will not use in keys and values (e.g. ',' and ':' )

2. Write your map as a string (note the separator ',' also at beginning and end)

   animals=",moo:cow,woof:dog,"
   

3. Use a regex to extract the values

   get_animal {
       echo "$(expr "$animals" : ".*,$1:\([^,]*\),.*")"
   }
   

4. Split the string to list the items

   get_animal_items {
       arr=$(echo "${animals:1:${#animals}-2}" | tr "," "\n")
       for i in $arr
       do
           value="${i##*:}"
           key="${i%%:*}"
           echo "${value} likes to $key"
       done
   }
   

Now you can use it:

$ animal = get_animal "moo"
cow
$ get_animal_items
cow likes to moo
dog likes to woof

Answer 2

Bash 3 solution:

In reading some of the answers I put together a quick little function I would like to contribute back that might help others.

# Define a hash like this
MYHASH=("firstName:Milan"
        "lastName:Adamovsky")

# Function to get value by key
getHashKey()
 {
  declare -a hash=("${!1}")
  local key
  local lookup=$2

  for key in "${hash[@]}" ; do
   KEY=${key%%:*}
   VALUE=${key#*:}
   if [[ $KEY == $lookup ]]
   then
    echo $VALUE
   fi
  done
 }

# Function to get a list of all keys
getHashKeys()
 {
  declare -a hash=("${!1}")
  local KEY
  local VALUE
  local key
  local lookup=$2

  for key in "${hash[@]}" ; do
   KEY=${key%%:*}
   VALUE=${key#*:}
   keys+="${KEY} "
  done

  echo $keys
 }

# Here we want to get the value of 'lastName'
echo $(getHashKey MYHASH[@] "lastName")


# Here we want to get all keys
echo $(getHashKeys MYHASH[@])

Answer 3

A coworker just mentioned this thread. I've independently implemented hash tables within bash, and it's not dependent on version 4. From a blog post of mine in March 2010 (before some of the answers here...) entitled Hash tables in bash:

# Here's the hashing function
ht() { local ht=`echo "$*" |cksum`; echo "${ht//[!0-9]}"; }

# Example:

myhash[`ht foo bar`]="a value"
myhash[`ht baz baf`]="b value"

echo ${myhash[`ht baz baf`]} # "b value"
echo ${myhash[@]} # "a value b value" though perhaps reversed

Sure, it makes an external call for cksum and is therefore somewhat slowed, but the implementation is very clean and usable. It's not bidirectional, and the built-in way is a lot better, but neither should really be used anyway. Bash is for quick one-offs, and such things should quite rarely involve complexity that might require hashes, except perhaps in your .bashrc and friends.

Answer 4

I create HashMaps in bash 3 using dynamic variables. I explained how that works in my answer to: Associative arrays in Shell scripts

Also you can take a look in shell_map, which is a HashMap implementation made in bash 3.

Answer 5

This is what I was looking for here:

declare -A hashmap
hashmap["key"]="value"
hashmap["key2"]="value2"
echo "${hashmap["key"]}"
for key in ${!hashmap[@]}; do echo $key; done
for value in ${hashmap[@]}; do echo $value; done
echo hashmap has ${#hashmap[@]} elements

This did not work for me with bash 4.1.5:

animals=( ["moo"]="cow" )

Answer 6

Just use the file system

The file system is a tree structure that can be used as a hash map. Your hash table will be a temporary directory, your keys will be filenames, and your values will be file contents. The advantage is that it can handle huge hashmaps, and doesn't require a specific shell.

Hashtable creation

hashtable=$(mktemp -d)

Add an element

echo $value > $hashtable/$key

Read an element

value=$(< $hashtable/$key)

Performance

Of course, its slow, but not that slow. I tested it on my machine, with an SSD and btrfs, and it does around 3000 element read/write per second.