How to merge two arrays in a zipper like fashion in Bash?

Question

I am trying to merge two arrays into one in a zipper like fashion. I have difficulty to make that happen.

array1=(one three five seven)
array2=(two four six eight)

I have tried with nested for-loops but can't figure it out. I don't want the output to be 13572468 but 12345678.

The actual script I am working on is here (http://ix.io/iZR).. but it is obviously not working as intended. I either get the whole of array2 printed (ex. 124683) or just the first index like if the loop didn't work (ex. 12325272).

So how do I get the output:

one two three four five six seven eight

with above two arrays?

Edit: I was able to solve it with two for-loops and paste (http://ix.io/iZU). It would still be interesting to see if someone have a better solution. So if you have time please take a look.

Answer 1

Assuming both arrays are the same size,

unset result
for (( i=0; i<${#array1[*]}; ++i)); do
    result+=( "${array1[$i]}" "${array2[$i]}" )
done