Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a file that's logically in the form of a multidimensional array with an unknown number of records in the file. The file looks like this:

name1
data1
name2
data2
name3
data3
...
nameN
dataN

How do I load this file into an array for processing, while keeping the two relevant lines of data (i.e., name1, data1) together?

I am working in korn shell, no perl available.

Many thanks in advance!

Leslie,
I do not know the reasons why you want to use two dimensional array,
but here is how you can access both variables:

Code:

while read mStr1
do
  read mStr2
  echo 'Str1 = '${mStr1}' Str2 = '${mStr2}
done < input_file

Is awk available?

Code:

$ cat infile
name1
data1
name2
data2
name3
data3
$ print ${.sh.version}
Version M-12/28/93d
$ awk '{x[$1]=$2}END{for(i in x)print "index:",i,"element:",x[i]}' <(paste -d" " - -<infile)
index: name1 element: data1
index: name2 element: data2
index: name3 element: data3

For ksh88 use paste -d" " - -<infile|awk ...