Well, no, not technically. Bash doesn't support hashes natively. So, we fake it via obfuscated and escaped environment variables. For really simple use cases, it's almost good enough. On the plus-side, it's in memory and relatively fast.
You might use hashi.sh if you're reaching for a Bash solution but don't quite yet want to break into Ruby/Python/Perl, &c. I use it to load snippets of text into the shell for frequent and fast programmatic access.
Potential uses:
- hardware catalog
- phone directory
- lightweight key 'registry'
- dictionary/map/lookup table
- implement a simple cache mechanism
- store a histogram of frequently seen files/directories/processes
- retrieve a count or list of unique keys stored
- etc...
Sure:
$ source hashi.sh
$ hsh set machine1 fqdn machine1.somewhere.net
$ hsh set machine1 hw "Dell Poweredge 1950"
$ hsh set machine1 user billybob
$ echo "FQDN: $(hsh get machine1 fqdn)"
FQDN: machine1.somewhere.net
$
# or, equivalently:
$ hsh declare machine1
$ machine1 set fqdn machine1.somewhere.net
$ machine1 set hw "Dell Poweredge 1950"
$ machine1 set user billybob
$ echo "FQDN: $(machine1 get fqdn)"
FQDN: machine1.somewhere.net
$Well, ok.
This software is released into the public domain. Please use it responsibly.
Enjoy.
If a man wishes to rid himself of a feeling of unbearable oppression, he may have to take hashi.sh. -- Friedrich Nietzsche