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i=0
while true; do
a[$i]=foo
i=$((i+1))
printf "\r%d " $i
done

This simple script shows on my systems (Gnu/Linux and Solaris):

• ksh88 limits the size to 2^12-1 (4095). (subscript out of range ). Some older releases like the one on HP-UX limit the size to 1023.

• ksh93 limits the size of a array to 2^22-1 (4194303), your mileage may vary.

• bash doesn't look to impose any hard-coded limit outside the one dictated by the underlying memory resources available. For example bash uses 1.3 GB of virtual memory for an array size of 18074340.

Note I gave up with mksh which was too slow executing the loop (more than one hundred times slower than zsh, ksh93 and bash.)