Hi,

I am trying to use the associative arrays in zsh, but I cannot figure out
how I can assign the output of a command to them. Hopefully someone here
can provide some assistance (or point me to an alternative)

I'd like to put the output of the jhead command (an image EXIF tag parser)
into an array. The output of jhead is as follows:

$ jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"
File name : img.jpg
File size : 2844547 bytes
File date : 2006:08:23 16:48:37

So I pipe it to a sed command:

$ jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"|
sed -n 's/^\([^:]\+[^ ]\)[ ]*: \(.*\)$/\1 \2/;H;${x;s/\n/ /g}'
File name img.jpg File size 2844547 bytes File date 2006:08:23 16:48:37

in order to do this:

$ typeset -A ARRAY
$ ARRAY=(`jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"|
sed -n 's/^\([^:]\+[^ ]\)[ ]*: \(.*\)$/\1 \2/;H;${x;s/\n/ /g}'`)
zsh: bad set of key/value pairs for associative array

So I tried several ways of quoting \1 and \2 (' as well as ")

$ jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"|
sed -n 's/^\([^:]\+[^ ]\)[ ]*: \(.*\)$/"\1" "\2"/;H;${x;s/\n/ /g}'
"File name" "img.jpg" "File size" "2844547 bytes" "File date" "2006:08:23
16:48:37"

$ jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"| sed -n 's/^\([^:]\+[^ ]\)[ ]*:
\(.*\)$/'\''\1'\'' '\''\2'\''/;H;${x;s/\n/ /g}'
'File name' 'img.jpg' 'File size' '2844547 bytes' 'File date' '2006:08:23
16:48:37'

but to no avail, it keeps complaining!

Any would be greatly appreciated.

Eric

On Wed, 23 Aug 2006 17:03:14 +0200, Eric Moors wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to use the associative arrays in zsh, but I cannot figure out
> how I can assign the output of a command to them. Hopefully someone here
> can provide some assistance (or point me to an alternative)
>
> I'd like to put the output of the jhead command (an image EXIF tag parser)
> into an array. The output of jhead is as follows:
>
> $ jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"
> File name : img.jpg
> File size : 2844547 bytes
> File date : 2006:08:23 16:48:37
[...]

Something like:

typeset -A a
jhead img.jpg | while IFS=": " read -r k v; do a[$k]=$v; done

or:

typeset -A a
IFS=$'\n\n'
a=(
$(jhead img.jpg | sed -n 's/ *: */\
/p')
)


(for example).

--
Stephane

>> I am trying to use the associative arrays in zsh, but I cannot figure out
>> how I can assign the output of a command to them. Hopefully someone here
>> can provide some assistance (or point me to an alternative)
>>
>> I'd like to put the output of the jhead command (an image EXIF tag
>> parser) into an array. The output of jhead is as follows:
>>
>> $ jhead img.jpg| grep "^File"
>> File name : img.jpg
>> File size : 2844547 bytes
>> File date : 2006:08:23 16:48:37
> [...]
>
> Something like:
>
> typeset -A a
> jhead img.jpg | while IFS=": " read -r k v; do a[$k]=$v; done

I also realized that I could use a while loop, but I preferred
to do without one. Pasting the output of the jhead|... line in
the array assigment worked fine, so I assumed there had to be some
way of doing it directly.

> or:
>
> typeset -A a
> IFS=$'\n\n'
> a=(
> $(jhead img.jpg | sed -n 's/ *: */\
> /p')
> )
>

Setting IFS!
This is just the hint I needed!

I am now using this.

IFS=$'\n='
typeset -A a
a=($(jhead img.jpg | sed -n 's/^\([^:]\+[^ ]\)[ ]*:[ ]\+\(.*\)$/\1=\2/p'))

Thanks

Eric