The bash man page has long had the following bug listed: "It's too big and too slow" (at the very bottom of the man page). If you agree with that, then you probably won't want to read about the "new" associative arrays that were added in version 4.0 of bash. On the other hand, if you've ever used any modern Office Suite and seen code-bloat at it's finest and just think the bash folks are exaggerating a bit, then read on.