How to implement Associative Arrays in SH(ash)?

Question

Command line

The question is how to write down some kind of associative arrays on sh (More precisely, on ash, which is part of BusyBox'a)
More specifically, there is a folder with files and there is an array with "file name" -> "some value" pairs (value - text + numbers +spaces+characters "!?,.#"
The script takes the file filename from the folder, searches in the list, if it finds it writes filename+string, if not - filename+default_string (Or it doesn't display anything at all)
. cat, awk, sed, grep.

Answer 1

If you get off the yoke of a php programmer and stop calling hash tables as associative arrays, life will be easier for you: stackoverflow.com/questions/1494178/how-to-define-...