Like some of other advanced program language, Bash also has Array data structures. There are some basic array tutorials can be found in The Ultimate Bash Array Tutorial with 15 Examples

Syntax:
declare -a Unix=('Debian' 'Red hat' 'Ubuntu' 'Suse' 'Fedora' 'UTS' 'OpenLinux');

Also the keyword declare -a can be omitted.

There are still some tips in daily really shell scripts:

Declare Array more simple

Array is created automatically when a variable is used in the format like,

name[index]=value

Length of the Array vs Length of the nth Element

We can get the length of an array using the special parameter called $#.

${#arrayname[@]} gives you the length of the whole array.

But, if the @ sign replace with nth of the element (>=1), then gives you the length of the nth Element in an array. Also if omit the [nth], the nth Defaults to the first element of the array.

echo ${#Unix[@]} # Number of elements in the array. => 7
echo ${#Unix}  # Number of characters in the first element located at index 1. i.e Debian => 6
echo ${#Unix[2]} # Echo the 2th element 'Red hat' length => 7 

Difference between @ and * when referencing array values

This Bash guide says:

If the index number is @ or *, all members of an array are referenced.

LIST=(1 2 3)
for i in "${LIST[@]}"; do
  echo "example.$i "
done

Gives: example.1 example.2 example.3 (desired result).

But if use ${LIST[*]}, The loop will get example.1 2 3 instead.

when using echo, @ and * actually do give the same results like,

echo ${LIST[@]}
echo ${LIST[*]}

both echos get the desired result: 1 2 3

The difference is subtle; $* creates one argument, while $@ will expand into separate arguments, so:

for i in "${LIST[@]}"

will deal with the list (print it) as multiple variables

but

for i in "${LIST[*]}"

will deal with the list as one variable.

Read Content of a File into an Array

You can load the content of the file line by line into an array by cat, example like,

$ cat loadcontent.sh

filecontent=( `cat "logfile" `)
for t in "${filecontent[@]}"; do
  echo $t
done
echo "Read file content!"

Also you can use [read][3] for more duplex through for loop. such as Reading Columns like,

var="one two three"
read -r col1 col2 col3 <<< "$var"
printf "col1: %s, col2: %s, col3 %s\n" "$col1" "$col2" "$col3"

Dump first column value of each line

while read -r -a line; do
  i=$((${#line[@]} - 1));
  [ $i -eq -1 ] || echo "${line["$i"]}";
done <~/.ssh/config

Parse predefine config in ~/.ssh/config like,

$ cat ~/.ssh/config
#def USER_NAME apps
#def HOST_PREFIX 10.200.51
Host *
    ControlMaster auto
    ControlPath ~/.ssh/master-%r@%h:%p
...

while read -r x k v; do
  if [ "$x" == "#def" ]; then
    echo "{$k/$v}";
  fi;
done <~/.ssh/config

In the above example, the k/v prefixing with #def has printed through for loop.