Hi,

For one of my programs, I need to have a hashtable as in Perl. Unfortunately shell doesnt provide any variable like hash. Is there anyway/trick, I could implement a hash in shell (using shell scripts/sed/awk).

JP

See the two Shell Array Variable scripts at context-switch.com - may be helpful.

You could fake a hash using a pseudo-associative array. AWK provides this facility but it involves a little work in the ksh, for example:

Storing a value using a variable as a key:

where n="TEST"

typeset val_${n}=3

the value of ${val_TEST} will be seen to be 3, checked using set or env. Reading the value is a little trickier. It can be performed directly if the key name is constant:

echo "${val_TEST}"

However, to use a variable key, perform the following:

echo "$(eval echo \$val_${n})"

This acts as a pointer and should then return 3.

In order to run the hash, set or env can be used along with a pattern matching utility, i.e. grep or egrep, especially if the variable name prefix is very specific (i.e. val_).