Exporting an array in bash script

Question

I can not export an array from a bash script to another bash script like this:

export myArray[0]="Hello"
export myArray[1]="World"

When I write like this there are no problem:

export myArray=("Hello" "World")

For several reasons I need to initialize my array into multiple lines. Do you have any solution?

Answer 1

Array variables may not (yet) be exported.

From the manpage of bash version 4.1.5 under ubuntu 10.04.

The following statement from Chet Ramey (current bash maintainer as of 2011) is probably the most official documentation about this "bug":

There isn't really a good way to encode an array variable into the environment.

http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg01774.html