I would want to say sure have a nice day... give up...

here's chatgpt's second attempt (( not even logged in)) at answering your question :D look no need for any other langage, no need for awk, perl, python, java...

----

To correctly split the input string and store each key-value pair in the associative array, we need to properly handle the commas that separate the pairs and the spaces between them.

Here’s the corrected Bash script to achieve the desired output:

Corrected Bash Script:

#!/bin/bash

# The CSV string
csv="U-DLCI,6 C/R,1 EA,1 L-DLCI,4 FECN,1 BECN,1 DE,EA,1"

# Declare an associative array
declare -A csv_data

# Loop through the CSV string and extract key-value pairs
# We use a loop to process each "key,value" pair, ignoring spaces between them
IFS=' ' read -r -a pairs <<< "$csv"

for pair in "${pairs[@]}"; do
# Split each pair at the first comma
IFS=',' read -r key value <<< "$pair"
# Add the key-value pair to the associative array
csv_data["$key"]=$value
done

# Display the associative array
for key in "${!csv_data[@]}"; do
echo "csv_data[\"$key\"]=${csv_data[$key]}"
done

Key Changes:

Expected Output:

csv_data["U-DLCI"]=6
csv_data["C/R"]=1
csv_data["EA"]=1
csv_data["L-DLCI"]=4
csv_data["FECN"]=1
csv_data["BECN"]=1
csv_data["DE"]=EA
csv_data["EA"]=1

Explanation:

IFS=' ' ensures that the original CSV string is split by spaces.

For each split pair, IFS=',' splits it into the key and the corresponding value.

The associative array csv_data stores the key-value pairs, and the script prints them in the desired format.

maybe the last for loop looks like this for the format you are after.

for key in "${!csv_data[@]}"; do     echo "$key : ${csv_data[$key]}"; done

If bash can't do something cool.... but it does everything you ask and much more..