Associative arrays: error "declare: -A: invalid option"
I've written a script that uses associative arrays in bash (v 4).
It works fine on my local machine which is using 4.1.5(1)-release.
On the production machine, using 4.1.0(1)-release the following line, which declares the assoc array, fails:
declare -A uniqjars
with the message:
/script.sh: line 11: declare: -A: invalid option
declare: usage: declare [-afFirtx] [-p] [name[=value] ...]
I was under the impression this was a general bash 4 feature?
In the man for bash on the production machine it discusses using -A so I assume it should work.
Associative arrays are created using
declare -A name.
I can confirm the script is using the right version of bash by printing out the value of echo 'bash -version.
What could I be doing wrong?
Answer
Make sure the version of bash being invoked as interpreter at the top of your shell script (#!/bin/bash or whatever) is also version 4. If you're doing:
bash --version
and it's giving you v4, do a which bash to check it's location.