Bash array json restic snapshots and jq

As you know bash is not ideal with multi arrays. Frequently I find myself wanting to read something like json into bash and loop over it. There are many ways to do this including readarray etc. I found this to work best for me. Note json can have lists so I collapse those with jq”s join. Example:

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# cat restic-loop-snaps.sh
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#!/bin/bash
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function loopOverArray(){
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   restic snapshots --json | jq -r '.' | jq -c '.[]'| while read i; do
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  id=$(echo "$i" | jq -r '.| .short_id')
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  ctime=$(echo "$i" | jq -r '.| .time')
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  hostname=$(echo "$i" | jq -r '.| .hostname')
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  paths=$(echo "$i" | jq -r '. | .paths | join(",")')
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  tagss=$(echo "$i" | jq -r '. | .tags | join(",")')
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  printf "%-10s - %-40s - %-20s - %-30s - %-20s\n" $id $ctime $hostname $paths $tags
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    done
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}
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loopOverArray
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# ./restic-loop-snaps.sh
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0a71b5d4   - 2019-05-31T05:03:20.655922639-05:00      - pop-os               - /DATA/MyWorkDocs        -
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