Convert numbers to enumeration of strings in bash

Question

Using bash, I have a list of strings that I want to use to replace an int. Here's an example:

day1=Monday
day2=Tuesday
day3=Wednesday
day4=Thursday
day5=Friday
day6=Saturday
day7=Sunday

If I have an int, $dow, to represent the day of the week, how do I print the actual string? I tried this:

echo ${day`echo $dow`}

but get error of "bad substitution". How do I make this work? Note: I can change the $day variables to a list or something.

Answer 1

Yes, it would be easiest to do this as an array:

day=([1]=Monday [2]=Tuesday ...)
echo "${day[dow]}"

Answer 2

case $dow in
  [1234567]) eval echo '$day'$dow ;;
esac

I didn't want to get yelled at for an unsafe use of "eval" :-)

There's probably a more "modern" way of doing this.

Answer 3

You could use variable indirection:

day_var=day$dow
echo ${!day_var}

But you should consider the use of arrays:

days=("Monday" "Tuesday" "Wednesday" "Thursday" "Friday" "Saturday" "Sunday")
echo ${days[$[$dow-1]]}

Answer 4

In June 1970 (you remember?) the month started with Monday:

for d in {1..7}
do 
     date -d 1970-06-0$d +%A
done