alternative to readarray, because it does not work on mac os x

Question

I have a varsValues.txt file

cat varsValues.txt
aa=13.7
something=20.6
countries=205
world=1
languages=2014
people=7.2
oceans=3.4

And I wou

Answer 1

Here's the awk version. Note that NPars is not hardcoded.

vars=($(awk -F= '{print $1}' varsValues.txt))
values=($(awk -F= '{print $2}' varsValues.txt))

Npars=${#vars[@]}

for ((i=0; i<$Npars; i++)); do
    eval ${vars[$i]}=${values[$i]}
done

echo $people