Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
In article mailman.13825.1353909089.855.bug-b...@gnu.org, Eduardo Bustamante dual...@gmail.com wrote: There are a lot of general purpose languages (not shell languages), that support multi-dimensional arrays. And these languages can call external tools just fine. Python, Perl, Ruby, ... pick one. Even Awk has faked support for multi-dimensional arrays. Off topic, but current GNU Awk has true multidimensional arrays. Arnold -- Aharon (Arnold) Robbins arnold AT skeeve DOT com P.O. Box 354Home Phone: +972 8 979-0381 Nof Ayalon Cell Phone: +972 50 729-7545 D.N. Shimshon 99785 ISRAEL
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 06:33:19AM +0100, Rene Herman wrote: I'm currently writing a larger bash script to manage my (ogg vorbis) music collection, including maintaining tags. Vorbis files can and (mine) often will contain repeated tags such as, say, artist=David Crosby and artist=Graham Nash and so on and as such, my artist variable is an array. Sounds like what you actually want is an associative array of lists, which is not something bash provides. You can mimic it using associative arrays with specially mangled keys (bash 4.0 and up), but it is not a native feature of the language.
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On 11/25/12 12:33 AM, Rene Herman wrote: Good day. I know that bash arrays are 1 dimensional -- but are there any plans for providing multi-dimensional arrays? I don't have any current plans to do so. I would take a look at any contributed code to add them, though. Chet -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRUc...@case.eduhttp://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On 11/26/2012 11:27 PM, Chet Ramey wrote: I know that bash arrays are 1 dimensional -- but are there any plans for providing multi-dimensional arrays? I don't have any current plans to do so. I would take a look at any contributed code to add them, though. Thanks for the reply. It's fairly unlikely that I will myself be able to try (on a sensible timescale) but it's good to know they're not vetoed. Not being hugely experienced in bash, I was sort of impressed with there seemingly not being any good point in NOT using it for my collection management stuff -- except maybe those multi-dimensional arrays. Thought I'd go see what their status was... Rene
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On Nov 25, 2012 1:37 AM, Rene Herman rene.her...@gmail.com wrote: Good day. I know that bash arrays are 1 dimensional -- but are there any plans for providing multi-dimensional arrays? I'm currently writing a larger bash script to manage my (ogg vorbis) music collection, including maintaining tags. Vorbis files can and (mine) often will contain repeated tags such as, say, artist=David Crosby and artist=Graham Nash and so on and as such, my artist variable is an array. However, the same things holds for any tag and I'm currently managing separate title, artist, genre, date, album, tracknumber, disc and discnumber arrays with fairly ugly manual loops, whereas I would much prefer to call them tag[i] instead and loop over them with actual for loops. Given that tag[i] is itself an array, I can't do that though. When you google for this issue, you find various contrived emulations of multi-dimensional arrays through function-accessors and such, but that's not really what I want to do. Thought I'd see if a suggestion that multi-dimensional arrays would really be much welcome would be welcome here... The things I'm trying to do with this script seem to most naturally belong to the realm of scripts and as such, I'm reluctant to switch to a different language. And, in fact, I'm sort of satisfied how this is now working. It's just that the code would much improve from multi-dimensional array support. Kind regards, Rene Why don't you write it in Python? It will be much easier. You can use advanced data structures and can even store your data in a database such as MySQL. Execution will be much faster, too.
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On 11/25/2012 03:19 PM, Dennis Williamson wrote: Why don't you write it in Python? It will be much easier. You can use advanced data structures and can even store your data in a database such as MySQL. Execution will be much faster, too. It won't be. Firstly since I'm not all that familiar with Python, but more importantly since I want to use the command line tools that I've grown accustomed to for manipulating my fairly large music database (oggenc, oggdec, vorbiscomment, ...). While it's certainly possible to launch those from any language, shell is the easy choice. Otherwise I'm just reading and manipulating text files, which bash is good enough at. I moreover have no need for databases other than the file system and my music player's database -- and given that execution will be completely I/O-bound, even using pure assembly would not in fact be any faster. All I want additionally is multi-dimensional arrays... Kind regards, Rene
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
Rene Herman wrote: All I want additionally is multi-dimensional arrays... There are various naming conventions and schemes to simulate multi-dimensional arrays using single dimension arrays. Since you want to continue with the shell and the shell has not (yet) provided multi-dimensional arrays then the only option for you is to simulate them. That isn't too difficult and if you search the web there are many different implementations with the biggest difference being whether ordering matters or not. Bob
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On 11/25/12 14:54, quoth Bob Proulx: Rene Herman wrote: All I want additionally is multi-dimensional arrays... There are various naming conventions and schemes to simulate multi-dimensional arrays using single dimension arrays. Since you want to continue with the shell and the shell has not (yet) provided multi-dimensional arrays then the only option for you is to simulate them. That isn't too difficult and if you search the web there are many different implementations with the biggest difference being whether ordering matters or not. Bob Good answer. One suggestion that is used in awk is to use the associative array functionality by making an index that is a list of integers that are separated by commas. Here's a quick example off the top of my shiny head: declare -A mdlist # Multi Dimensional list i1=44 i2=22 mdlist[$i1,$i2]=Hello -- Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have .0. happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ ..0 Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- 000 individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On 11/25/2012 08:54 PM, Bob Proulx wrote: There are various naming conventions and schemes to simulate multi-dimensional arrays using single dimension arrays. Since you want to continue with the shell and the shell has not (yet) provided multi-dimensional arrays then the only option for you is to simulate them. That isn't too difficult and if you search the web there are many different implementations with the biggest difference being whether ordering matters or not. Yes. However, that was not my question, as was also the case for the previous reply. I already indicated in the original posting that I'm aware of work-arounds. Here it is again: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2012-11/msg00048.html The question, to the bash developers (-- !) is simply if there are any plans for implementing multi-dimensional array support, with the two implied statements being that a) I'd like that and b) I have a fairly non-contrived use-case for them, which I thought might be welcome as an argument. It's been a long time since I participated on open-source mailing-lists and I'm remembering why. Please don't take it the wrong way, but please, pretty please, unless you can answer the question, just don't bother replying. Rene.
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
Hey, calm down. People are just trying to help. Also, this question has already been asked previously. Please read this: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-09/msg00062.html (To put you in context, Chet Ramey is the current maintainer of bash). It's not really an important feature. Bash is already doing too much for a *shell* language (yes, note that a shell language isn't the same as a scripting language). There are a lot of general purpose languages (not shell languages), that support multi-dimensional arrays. And these languages can call external tools just fine. Python, Perl, Ruby, ... pick one. Even Awk has faked support for multi-dimensional arrays. Don't take me wrong though. Bash is really good, for what it was meant. If you need complex data structures, or complex text processing, bash isn't really the best tool for the job. Just do yourself a favor, and start learning a new language. One that supports custom data structures. That already has support for multi-dimensional arrays. P.S.: If you still have problems understanding the difference between a shell, and a general purpose language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_(computing)#Text_.28CLI.29_shells -- Eduardo Bustamante On Sun, Nov 25, 2012 at 9:32 PM, Rene Herman rene.her...@gmail.com wrote: On 11/25/2012 08:54 PM, Bob Proulx wrote: There are various naming conventions and schemes to simulate multi-dimensional arrays using single dimension arrays. Since you want to continue with the shell and the shell has not (yet) provided multi-dimensional arrays then the only option for you is to simulate them. That isn't too difficult and if you search the web there are many different implementations with the biggest difference being whether ordering matters or not. Yes. However, that was not my question, as was also the case for the previous reply. I already indicated in the original posting that I'm aware of work-arounds. Here it is again: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/**html/bug-bash/2012-11/**msg00048.htmlhttp://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2012-11/msg00048.html The question, to the bash developers (-- !) is simply if there are any plans for implementing multi-dimensional array support, with the two implied statements being that a) I'd like that and b) I have a fairly non-contrived use-case for them, which I thought might be welcome as an argument. It's been a long time since I participated on open-source mailing-lists and I'm remembering why. Please don't take it the wrong way, but please, pretty please, unless you can answer the question, just don't bother replying. Rene.
Re: Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
On 11/26/2012 06:51 AM, Eduardo Bustamante wrote: Hey, calm down. People are just trying to help. Also, this question has already been asked previously. Please read this: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-09/msg00062.html (To put you in context, Chet Ramey is the current maintainer of bash). I'm quite calm, thank you :-) And thank you doubly for the link. Hadn't googled up much of anything concerning this myself (other than that multitude of existing workarounds) but Chet's reply is exactly the thing that I wanted -- to see if there is an interest in discussing the merits of implementing them, while presenting a use-case that, I feel, naturally belongs to the realm of scripts yet would improve nicely from having them. I am not familiar with the bash source, and if they are actually hard and/or messy to implement, the answer might very well still be simply no, and I'll just continue to use the accessor-function approach that I'm using now -- but if it's just a matter of missing use-cases, I thought that me mentioning this one could be welcome while I was writing this script. So. I see that that previous discussion is only from a year ago but died immediately again without a use-case. Chet? You probably read the list so pardon if you don't care for the personal CC but do you feel that this: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2012-11/msg00048.html has any merit? Kind regards, Rene.
Any chance of multi-dimensional arrays?
Good day. I know that bash arrays are 1 dimensional -- but are there any plans for providing multi-dimensional arrays? I'm currently writing a larger bash script to manage my (ogg vorbis) music collection, including maintaining tags. Vorbis files can and (mine) often will contain repeated tags such as, say, artist=David Crosby and artist=Graham Nash and so on and as such, my artist variable is an array. However, the same things holds for any tag and I'm currently managing separate title, artist, genre, date, album, tracknumber, disc and discnumber arrays with fairly ugly manual loops, whereas I would much prefer to call them tag[i] instead and loop over them with actual for loops. Given that tag[i] is itself an array, I can't do that though. When you google for this issue, you find various contrived emulations of multi-dimensional arrays through function-accessors and such, but that's not really what I want to do. Thought I'd see if a suggestion that multi-dimensional arrays would really be much welcome would be welcome here... The things I'm trying to do with this script seem to most naturally belong to the realm of scripts and as such, I'm reluctant to switch to a different language. And, in fact, I'm sort of satisfied how this is now working. It's just that the code would much improve from multi-dimensional array support. Kind regards, Rene
