Substition in Bash and associative array

Question

I want to dynamically declare and unset associative array, but arrays drive me crazy and they do have the best driving licence. :-(

names=( Charlie Snoopy Linux Marcia )
intestines=$(printf "%s\n" ${names[@]} | awk '{ print "["$1"]="FNR  }' | tr "\n" " ")
echo $intestines # ok: [Charlie]=1 [Snoopy]=2 [Linux]=3 [Marcia]=4
unset namesAssociative
declare -A namesAssociative=( [Charlie]=1 [Snoopy]=2 [Linux]=3 [Marcia]=4 ) # works ok 
echo ${namesAssociative[Linux]} # OK: 3 

But:

unset namesAssociative
declare -A namesAssociative=( $intestines ) # error
exec "declare -A namesAssociative=( $intestines )" # error
declare -A namesAssociative=( $(printf "%s\n" ${names[@]} | awk '{ print "["$1"]="FNR  }' | tr "\n" " ") ) # error
etc...

I guess God punishes me that I have not written that in Python from the very begining... :-)

Answer 1

This works as you expect and is made safe using the %q format indicator for the associative array's keys.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

names=( Charlie Snoopy Linux Marcia )

# shellcheck disable=SC2155 # Intended dynamic declaration
declare -A namesAssociative="($(
  for i in "${!names[@]}"; do
    printf '[%q]=%d ' "${names[i]}" $((i + 1))
  done
))"


declare -p namesAssociative

or Alternatively if your names array is not sparse:

declare -A namesAssociative="($(
  i=1
  for k in "${names[@]}"; do
    printf '[%q]=%d ' "$k" $((i++))
  done
))"