How can I join elements of an array in Bash?

Question

If I have an array like this in Bash:

FOO=( a b c )

How do I join the elements with commas? For example, producing a,b,c.

Answer 1

Using no external commands:

$ FOO=( a b c )     # initialize the array
$ BAR=${FOO[@]}     # create a space delimited string from array
$ BAZ=${BAR// /,}   # use parameter expansion to substitute spaces with comma
$ echo $BAZ
a,b,c

Warning, it assumes elements don't have whitespaces.