How do I check if variable is an array?

Question

I have a loop over variable names and I need to check if content of a variable is an array or not:

for varname in AA BB CC; do   local val   if [ "$varname" is array ]; then # how can I perform this test?     echo do something with an array   else     echo do something with a "'normal'" variable   fi done 

How do I do it?

Answer 1

To avoid a call to grep, you could use:

if [[ "$(declare -p variable_name)" =~ "declare -a" ]]; then     echo array else     echo no array fi 

Answer 2

According to this wiki page, you can use this command:

declare -p variable-name 2> /dev/null | grep -q '^declare \-a'