Bash associative array size

Question

Is there a way to get size of associative array in bash:

declare -A array

...without iterating through the elements?

The size of interest is both: just number of elements, and memory amount it consumes?

score 35 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 12 '13 at 11:37

35

${#array[@]} would return you the size of the array.

$ declare -A array
$ array[foo]='something'
$ array[bar]='blah'
$ array[42]='nothing'
$ echo ${#array[@]}
3

answered Aug 12 '13 at 11:37

devnull

oh right, totally forgot, thank you. Any idea on resource consumption when the array becomes of substantial size? – wick Aug 12 '13 at 12:01
1

@wick I don't think that you can determine the resource consumption, though. Consider an alternate approach if your arrays are becoming really *huge*. – devnull Aug 12 '13 at 12:03
1

Reference: http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/parameter-substitution.html (scroll down to *Variable length / Substring removal*). – Ohad Schneider Jan 12 '17 at 11:56

score 14 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 12 '13 at 11:37

14

You can use ${#array[@]} to get the number of elements.

I don't think it is possible to get the amount of memory it consumes however.

answered Aug 12 '13 at 11:37

paul

2 Answers2