nested shell variables without using eval

Question

Can I get rid of eval here? I'm trying to set $current_database with the appropriate variable determined by user input (country and action)

# User input
country="es"
action="sales"

# Possible variables for current_database
final_es_sales_path="blahblah/es/sales.csv"
final_en_support_path="yadayada/en/support.csv"
final_it_inventory_path="humhum/it/inventory.csv"
...

current_database=$(eval echo \${final_${country}_${action}_path})

Answer 1

You can use associative arrays, joining the value of both variables. For example:

declare -A databases
# initialization
databases["es:sales"]="blahblah/es/sales.csv"
databases["en:support"]="yadayada/en/support.csv"

Then, you can get the database just by:

echo ${databases["${country}:${action}"]}

This has the advantage of having the database names collected by only one variable.