Visit associative-array keys in a stable order.
Bash Scripts: Associative arrays have no defined iteration order, so sort their keys explicitly.
set -euo pipefail
declare -A scores=([Grace]=95 [Ada]=98)
while IFS= read -r key; do
printf "%s:%s\n" "$key" "${scores[$key]}"
done < <(printf "%s\n" "${!scores[@]}" | LC_ALL=C sort)Expected output EXAMPLE
Ada:98 Grace:95
Details
Requires Bash 4 or later. Save as snippet.sh and run bash snippet.sh in an empty working directory. Associative arrays have no defined iteration order, so sort their keys explicitly.
This line-delimited recipe assumes keys contain no newline characters.
Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · · GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) · bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test inputs, results and environment
The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Snippet process uid 65534 with a read-only root filesystem and temporary working files. Networking disabled. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.
- Architecture / host kernel
- x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
- Snippet identity / locale
- uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged process) / C.UTF-8
- Interpreter invocation
bash -euo pipefail -c <published code>- Container image ID
sha256:ec91410a8f6ec3e985830b5e3a0560306d36f8c1c5ccd91a6699abe707123fa3- Code SHA-256
0978a2661911cd23909239593abea686018f19c1be992c638fa5c1f54845c665- Dependencies
- bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3
Test input setup
These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.
# No input files required.
Observed standard output
Ada:98 Grace:95
Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.