Using arrays in shell script

Question

I'm trying to store the pathway to a website in an array, but am having trouble.

It is working in the for loop - when I echo the contents of the array, it prints correctly.

In the If/Else, though, I am trying to store a specific part of the array in another variable, and that is not working. When I echo the specific part of the array, it prints nothing.

Here is the code:

#! /bin/sh

SITES=()
i=0

for d in /var/www/sites/*/;
do (
    PATHWAY=$d
    SITES+=($PATHWAY)
    echo "$i: $PATHWAY"
);  let "i++"
done

read -p 'Enter the number of the website you want to restore. Enter "exit" to quit. ' url

if [ "$url" = "exit" ]
then
    exit 0

else
    RESTORE_URL=${SITES[url]}
fi

Answer 1

This sounds like a good place to use a select statement:

select path in /var/www/sites/* EXIT; do
    if [[ "EXIT" = "$path" ]]; then
        exit 0
    else
        : do stuff here referencing $path
    fi
done

Answer 2

Your loop (with my indentation):

for d in /var/www/sites/*/; do
    (   PATHWAY=$d
        SITES+=($PATHWAY)
        echo "$i: $PATHWAY"  )

    let "i++"
done

Notice how most of the loop body is in a subshell? This means that the changes to those variables won't be seen outside of that subshell, and that they are reset for each iteration in the loop.

Ether change the (...) to {...;} or remove them completely.

A better alternative for the script as a whole would be to use select as DopeGhoti explains.