Look into shell-supported data structures

[nkantar]

It would appear at least Bash actually supports at least arrays. It's possible that support for these might be beneficial.

[P403n1x87]

It looks like it's not possible to export arrays in Bash:

$ export ARRAY=(1 2 3)
$ env | grep ARRAY
$

[goodwillcoding]

$ declare -a ARRAY
$ ARRAY=(1 2 3)
$ echo ${ARRAY}
1
$ echo ${ARRAY[*]}
1 2 3
$ for i in ${ARRAY[*]}; do echo ${i}; done
1
2
3
$ echo ${ARRAY[1]}
2

[goodwillcoding]

array and associative arrays (dicts/hashes) are supported: https://www.shell-tips.com/bash/arrays/

[P403n1x87]

$ export TEST=(1 2 3)
$ python3 -c "import os; print(os.getenv('TEST'))"
None
$ TEST=(1 2 3) python3 -c "import os; print(os.getenv('TEST'))"
(1 2 3)