Elegant use of arrays in ksh - arrays

Question

I'm trying build an sort of property set in ksh.
Thought the easiest way to do so was using arrays but the syntax is killing me.
What I want is to
Build an arbitrary sized array in a config file with a name and a property.
Iterate for each item in that list and get that property.
I theory what I wish I could do is something like
MONITORINGSYS={
SYS1={NAME="GENERATOR" MONITORFUNC="getGeneratorStatus"}
SYS2={NAME="COOLER" MONITORFUNC="getCoolerStatus"}
}
Then later on, be able to do something like:
for CURSYS in $MONITORINGSYS
do
CSYSNAME=$CURSYS.NAME
CSYSFUNC=$CURSYS.MONITORFUNC
REPORT="$REPORT\n$CSYSNAME"
CSYSSTATUS=CSYSFUNC $(date)
REPORT="$REPORT\t$CSYSSTATUS"
done
echo $REPORT
Well, that's not real programming, but I guess you got the point..
How do I do that?
[EDIT]
I do not mean I want to use associative arrays. I only put this way to make my question more clear... I.e. It would not be a problem if the loop was something like:
for CURSYS in $MONITORINGSYS
do
CSYSNAME=${CURSYS[0]}
CSYSFUNC=${CURSYS[1]}
REPORT="$REPORT\n$CSYSNAME"
CSYSSTATUS=CSYSFUNC $(date)
REPORT="$REPORT\t$CSYSSTATUS"
done
echo $REPORT
Same applies to the config file.. I'm just looking for a syntax that makes it minimally readable.
cheers

Answer 1

Not exactly sure what you want... Kornshell can handle both associative and indexed arrays.
However, Kornshell arrays are one dimensional. It might be possible to use indirection to emulate a two dimensional array via the use of $() and eval. I did this a couple of times in the older Perl 4.x and Perl 3.x, but it's a pain. If you want multidimensional arrays, use Python or Perl.
The only thing is that you must declare arrays via the typedef command:
$ typeset -A foohash #foohash is an associative array
$ typeset -a foolist #foolist is an integer indexed array.
Maybe your script can look something like this
typeset -a sysname
typeset -a sysfunct
sysname[1] = "GENERATOR"
sysname[2] = "COOLER"
sysfunc[1] = "getGeneratorStatus"
sysfunc[2] = "getCoolerStatus"
for CURSYS in {1..2}
do
CSYSNAME="${sysname[$CURSYS]}"
CSYSFUNC="${sysfunc[$CURSYS]}"
REPORT="$REPORT\n$CSYSNAME"
CSYSSTATUS=$(eval "CSYSFUNC $(date)")
REPORT="$REPORT\t$CSYSSTATUS"
done
echo $REPORT

Answer 2

ksh93 now has compound variables which can contain a mixture of indexed and associative arrays. No need to declare it as ksh will work it out itself.
#!/bin/ksh
MONITORINGSYS=(
[SYS1]=(NAME="GENERATOR" MONITORFUNC="getGeneratorStatus")
[SYS2]=(NAME="COOLER" MONITORFUNC="getCoolerStatus")
)
echo MONITORING REPORT
echo "-----------------"
for sys in ${!MONITORINGSYS[*]}; do
echo "System: $sys"
echo "Name: ${MONITORINGSYS[$sys].NAME}"
echo "Generator: ${MONITORINGSYS[$sys].MONITORFUNC}"
echo
done
Output:
MONITORING REPORT
-----------------
System: SYS1
Name: GENERATOR
Generator: getGeneratorStatus
System: SYS2
Name: COOLER
Generator: getCoolerStatus