Bourne shell does not support arrays, but some commands can process strings containing multiple words separated by white space.

#!/bin/sh

names="Barney Bert Billy Bob Brad Brett Brody"
for name in $names; do
    ...
done
        

C shell supports basic arrays. One advantage of this is that we can create lists of strings where some of the elements contain white space.

An array constant is indicated by a list enclosed in parenthesis.

Each array element is identified by an integer subscript.

We can also use a range of subscripts, separated by '-'.

#!/bin/csh -ef

set names=("Bob Newhart" "Bob Marley" "Bobcat Goldthwait")
set c=1
while ( $c <= $#names )
    printf "$names[$c]\n"
    @ c++
end

printf "$names[2-3]\n"

The $argv variable containing command-line arguments is an array. Hence, the $#argv variable is not special to $argv, but just another example of referencing the number of elements in an array.