Dynamically populate multidimensional awk array

Question

I'm working on an Awk/Gawk script that parses a file, populating a multidimensional array for each line. The first column is a period delimited string, with each value being a reference to the array key for the next level. The 2nd column is the value

Here's an example of what the content being parsed looks like:

$ echo -e "personal.name.first	= John
personal.name.last	= Doe
personal.other.dob	= 05/07/87
personal.contact.phone	= 602123456
personal.contact.email	= john.doe@idk
employment.jobs.1	= Company One
employment.jobs.2	= Company Two
employment.jobs.3	= Company Three"
personal.name.first     = John
personal.name.last      = Doe
personal.other.dob      = 05/07/87
personal.contact.phone  = 602123456
personal.contact.email  = john.doe@idk
employment.jobs.1       = Company One
employment.jobs.2       = Company Two
employment.jobs.3       = Company Three

Which after being parsed, Im expecting it to have the same structure as:

data["personal"]["name"]["first"]     = "John"
data["personal"]["name"]["last"]      = "Doe"
data["personal"]["other"]["dob"]      = "05/07/87"
data["personal"]["contact"]["phone"]  = "602123456"
data["personal"]["contact"]["email"]  = "john.doe@foo.com"
data["employment"]["jobs"]["1"]       = Company One
data["employment"]["jobs"]["2"]       = Company Two
data["employment"]["jobs"]["3"]       = Company Three

The part that I'm stuck on is how to dynamically populate the keys while structuring the multidimensional array.

I found this SO thread that covers a similar issue, which was resolved by using the SUBSEP variable, which at first seemed like it would work as I needed, but after some testing, it looks like arr["foo", "bar"] = "baz" doesn't get treated like a real array, such as arr["foo"]["bar"] = "baz" would. An example of what I mean by that would be the inability to count the values in any level of the array: arr["foo", "bar"] = "baz"; print length(arr["foo"]) would simply print a 0 (zero)

I found this SO thread which helps a little, possibly pointing me in the right direction.

In a snippet in the thread mentioned:

BEGIN {
  x=SUBSEP

  a="Red" x "Green" x "Blue"
  b="Yellow" x "Cyan" x "Purple"

  Colors[1][0] = ""
  Colors[2][0] = ""

  split(a, Colors[1], x)
  split(b, Colors[2], x)

  print Colors[2][3]
}

Is pretty close, but the problem I'm having now is the fact that the keys (EG: Red, Green, etc) need to be specified dynamically, and there could be one or more keys.

Basically, how can I take the a_keys and b_keys strings, split them by ., and populate the a and b variables as multidimensional arrays?..

BEGIN {
  x=SUBSEP

  # How can I take these strings...
  a_keys = "Red.Green.Blue"
  b_keys = "Yellow.Cyan.Purple"

  # .. And populate the array, just as this does:
  a="Red" x "Green" x "Blue"
  b="Yellow" x "Cyan" x "Purple"

  Colors[1][0] = ""
  Colors[2][0] = ""

  split(a, Colors[1], x)
  split(b, Colors[2], x)

  print Colors[2][3]
}

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Dynamically populate multidimensional awk array

2 Answers