Multidimensional arrays

AWK supports one-dimensional arrays only. However,we can simulate multidimensional arraysusing one-dimensional arrays.Let us create a multidimensional array as follows:

$ vi multi_arr1.awk

BEGIN{
    arr["1,1"] = 10
    arr["1,2"] = 20
    arr["2,1"] = 30
    arr["2,2"] = 40
    arr["3,1"] = 50
    arr["3,2"] = 60

    for ( v in arr )

        print "Index ",v, " contains "arr[v]
}

<strong>$ awk  -f  multi_arr1.awk

The output of the execution of the preceding code is as follows:

Index  1,1  contains 10
Index  1,2  contains 20
Index  2,1  contains 30
Index  2,2  contains 40
Index  3,1  contains 50
Index  3,2  contains 60

In the preceding example, we have given the arr["1,1"] array as the index. It is not two indexes, as would be the case in a true multidimensional array in other programming languages. It is just one index with the"1,1" string. So, AWK concatenates the index value and makes them a single string index in the case of multidimensional arrays as well...