Is it possible to append an item to an array in awk without specifying an index?

Question

I realize that awk has associative arrays, but I wonder if there is an awk equivalent to this:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.array-push.php

The obvious workaround is to just say:

array[$new_element] = $new_element 

However, this seems less readable and more hackish than it needs to be.

Answer 1

I don't think an array length is immediately available in awk (at least not in the versions I fiddle around with). But you could simply maintain the length and then do something like this:

array[arraylen++] = $0; 

And then access the elements it via the same integer values:

for ( i = 0; i < arraylen; i++ )    print array[i];