Associative arrays (declare -A) in Bash Scripting - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Using Associative Arrays in Bash

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small store's inventory. You want to keep track of product prices using a simple script.

🎯 Goal: Create a Bash script that uses an associative array to store product names and their prices, then display the price of each product.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use an associative array declared with declare -A

Store exact product-price pairs as given

Use a for loop to iterate over the associative array

Print each product and its price in the format: Product: Price

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Associative arrays help store and manage key-value pairs like product prices, user settings, or configuration options in scripts.

💼 Career

Knowing associative arrays is useful for automating tasks, managing data in scripts, and writing efficient shell scripts in system administration or DevOps roles.

1

Create an associative array with products and prices

Create an associative array called products using declare -A. Add these exact entries: apple=100, banana=40, orange=70.

Bash Scripting

# Create an associative array called products with the given entries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use declare -A products to create the associative array. Then assign the key-value pairs inside parentheses.

2

Add a variable to count the number of products

Create a variable called count that stores the number of products in the products associative array.

Bash Scripting

declare -A products=( [apple]=100 [banana]=40 [orange]=70 )
# Create a variable count to hold the number of products
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use ${#products[@]} to get the number of keys in the associative array.

3

Loop through the associative array to print products and prices

Use a for loop with the variable product to iterate over the keys of products. Inside the loop, get the price using ${products[$product]}.

Bash Scripting

declare -A products=( [apple]=100 [banana]=40 [orange]=70 )
count=${#products[@]}
# Use a for loop to iterate over products and get each price
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use "${!products[@]}" to get all keys. Then access each value with ${products[$product]}.

4

Print each product and its price

Inside the for loop, print the product and price in the format: Product: Price. Use echo with the variables product and price.

Bash Scripting

declare -A products=( [apple]=100 [banana]=40 [orange]=70 )
count=${#products[@]}
for product in "${!products[@]}"; do
    price=${products[$product]}
    # Print product and price here
    # Your code here
done

Need a hint?

Use echo "$product: $price" to print each pair.