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POHow to use global arrays in bash?
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copied!<p>I was searching through SO and google for a solution to my problem for 2 days but I had no luck. My problem is that I have an array and I initiate its elements with 0's, and I modify its elements' values inside for\while loop scope. But when I print the array's values outside the loop, I find it all 0's as their initial values!!</p> <p>Here is my code:</p> <pre><code>#!/bin/bash # # This is a script to reformat CSV files into pretty-formatted txt files. clear echo 'This is a script to reformat CSV files into pretty-formatted txt files.' echo # Get number of elements. elements=$(cat CSV_File | sed -n 1'p' | tr ',' '\n' | wc -l) # "cat CSV_File" for getting text of the file. # "sed -n 1'p'" for getting only first line. # "tr ',' '\n'" for replacing ',' with '\n'. # "wc -l" for getting number of lines (i.e number of elements). # Get number of lines. lines=$(cat CSV_File | wc -l) # "cat CSV_File" for getting text of the file. # "wc -l" for getting number of lines. # Initiate an array for elements' lengths. for ((i=1; $i < (( $elements + 1 )) ;i++)) do lengths[$i]="0" done # Find tallest element of each column and put the values into 'lengths' array. for ((i=1; $i <= $lines ;i++)) do j="1" cat CSV_File | sed -n ${i}'p' | tr ',' '\n' | while read element do if [ ${lengths[$j]} -le ${#element} ] then lengths[$j]=${#element} fi (( j++ )) done done echo ${lengths[1]} # It should print 5 not 0 echo ${lengths[2]} # It should print 4 not 0 echo ${lengths[3]} # It should print 19 not 0 echo ${lengths[4]} # It should print 11 not 0 echo ${lengths[5]} # It should print 2 not 0 echo ${lengths[6]} # It should print 5 not 0 echo ${lengths[7]} # It should print 14 not 0 echo ... </code></pre> <p>and here is CSV_File contents:</p> <pre><code>Jones,Bill,235 S. Williams St.,Denver,CO,80221,(303) 244-7989 Smith,Tom,404 Polk Ave.,Los Angeles,CA,90003,(213) 879-5612 </code></pre> <p>Note that when I put <code>echo</code> inside the if statement, it prints the correct value:</p> <pre><code>if [ ${lengths[$j]} -le ${#element} ] then lengths[$j]=${#element} echo ${lengths[$j]} fi </code></pre> <p>What is wrong I'm doing? Am I missing something?</p>

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