Question

Which of the following is an associative array?

(a) a[ ]

(b) arr[ ]

(c) envr [ ]

(d) ENVIRON[ ]

I had been asked this question during an online interview.

Query is from Various Operations using Awk Command in section Awk – An Advanced Filter & Perl – The Master Manipulator of Unix

Answer 1

The correct option is (d) ENVIRON[ ]

To elaborate: awk doesn’t treat array indices as integers. Awk arrays are associative (hash) arrays. Similarly, ENVIRON[ ] is also an associative array, known as environment array which is used to store all environment variables.