Often you may want to sort an associative array in Bash.
You can use the following methods to do so:
Method 1: Sort Associative Array by Key
for k in "${!my_array[@]}"
do
echo $k ' - ' ${my_array["$k"]}
done |
sort | xargs -n3
This particular example will sort the associative array named my_array based on the keys.
Method 2: Sort Associative Array by Value
for k in "${!my_array[@]}"
do
echo $k ' - ' ${my_array["$k"]}
done |
sort -nr -k3
This particular example will sort the associative array named my_array based on the values.
Note: In this example we specify sort -nr to sort the values in numerical reverse order.
The following example shows how to use each of these methods in practice with the following associative array named my_array in which the keys are the names of basketball teams and the values are points scored by a player on that team:
declare -A my_array=( [Mavs]=22 [Heat]=14 [Nets]=36 [Hawks]=29 )
Example 1: Sort Associative Array by Key
We can use the following syntax to sort the associative array named my_array based on the keys of the array:
for k in "${!my_array[@]}"
do
echo $k ' - ' ${my_array["$k"]}
done |
sort | xargs -n3
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns the associate array sorted in order based on the keys in alphabetical order:
- Hawks
- Heat
- Mavs
- Nets
Example 2: Sort Associative Array by Value
We can use the following syntax to sort the associative array named my_array based on the keys of the array:
for k in "${!my_array[@]}"
do
echo $k ' - ' ${my_array["$k"]}
done |
sort -nr -k3
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns the associate array sorted in order based on the values in descending numerical order:
- 36
- 29
- 22
- 14
Note: You can use sort -n -k3 on the last line to instead sort based on values in ascending order.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Bash:
Bash: How to Iterate Over Associative Array
Bash: How to Split a String into an Array
Bash: How to Remove Last Element from Array
Bash: How to Find Minimum and Maximum Values in Array
