Get the index of a value in a Bash array

Question

I have something in bash like

myArray=(\'red\' \'orange\' \'green\')

And I would like to do something like

echo ${         


        

Answer 1

A little more concise and works in Bash 3.x:

my_array=(red orange green)
value='green'

for i in "${!my_array[@]}"; do
   [[ "${my_array[$i]}" = "${value}" ]] && break
done

echo $i

Answer 2

I like that solution:

let "n=(`echo ${myArray[@]} | tr -s " " "\n" | grep -n "green" | cut -d":" -f 1`)-1"

The variable n will contain the result!

Answer 3

This outputs the 0-based array index of the query (here "orange").

echo $(( $(printf "%s\n" "${myArray[@]}" | sed -n '/^orange$/{=;q}') - 1 ))

If the query does not occur in the array then the above outputs -1.

If the query occurs multiple times in the array then the above outputs the index of the query's first occurrence.

Since this solution invokes sed, I doubt that it can compete with some of the pure bash solutions in this thread in efficiency.