Create array in bash dynamically

Question

I would like to create and fill an array dynamically but it doesn't work like this:

i=0
while true; do
    read input
    field[$i]=$input
    ((i++))
    echo {$field[$i]}  
done

Answer 1

The assignment is fine; the lookup is wrong:

echo "${field[$i]}"

Answer 2

Try something like this:

#! /bin/bash
field=()
while read -r input ; do
    field+=("$input")
done
echo Num items: ${#field[@]}
echo Data: ${field[@]}

It stops reading when no more input is available (end of file, ^D in the keyboard), then prints the number of elements read and the whole array.