Re: [Help-bash] How to keep associative array order

[Greg Wooledge]

On Tue, Apr 30, 2019 at 11:35:00AM -0400, Jerry wrote:
> I want to keep an index of an associative array. I found a few methods
> on this site:
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29161323/how-to-keep-associative-array-order

You can keep a second array, indexed instead of associative, and use
that as the list of indices into the associative array.

choices=(a b c d e)
declare -A choicelabel=(
    [a]="Alan" [b]="Betty" [c]="Charlie" [d]="Doug" [e]="Ethel"
)

for i in "address@hidden"; do 
    printf '%s: %s\n' "$i" "${choicelabel[$i]}"
done