One-dimensional arrays

The AWK language provides one-dimensional arrays for storing strings and numbers. An array name could be any valid variable name. One variable name cannot be used as both an array and a variable at the same time in the same program.

Arrays in AWK are extremely powerful in comparison to traditional arrays that we use in other programming languages. Arrays in AWK are associative—that is,each array is a collection of a pair: an index and its corresponding array element value. Inassociativearrays,indexes are not essentially required to be in order, one can use either a string or a number as an array index. An array size can expand or shrink at runtime and is not statically defined.

Its syntax is as follows:

arr[index] = value

The different elements of the array syntax used here are explained in the following list:

• arr: This is the name of the array
• index: This is the index of the array
• value: This is any value assigned to the element of the array

The following are some examples...