How to get the last element from an array in Bash

In this tutorial, we are going to learn about how to get the last element from an array in Bash.

Consider, we have the following array.

array=(1 2 3 4 5)

Now, we want to get the last element 5 from the array.

To get the last element (5) from the array, we can use the subscript [ ] syntax by passing an index -1.

In bash the arrays are zero-indexed. The first element index is 0 and negative indices counting back from the end of an array, so the index of -1 is used to access the last element.

Here is an example:

array=(1 2 3 4 5)

echo ${array[-1]}

Output:

5

If you are using the bash version 4.0 or below, you can use the following syntax.

array=(1 2 3 4 5)

echo ${array[${#array[@]}-1]}