Returning a Dictionary from a Bash Function - bash

Question

I want to have a function in bash, which create a Dictionary as a local variable. Fill the Dictionary with one element and then return this dictionary as output.
Is the following code correct?
function Dictionary_Builder ()
{
local The_Dictionary
unset The_Dictionary
declare -A The_Dictionary
The_Dictionary+=(["A_Key"]="A_Word")
return $The_Dictionary
}
How can I access to the output of the function above? Can I use the following command in bash?
The_Output_Dictionary=Dictionary_Builder()

Answer 1

To capture output of a command or function, use command substitution:
The_Output_Dictionary=$(Dictionary_Builder)
and output the value to return, i.e. replace return with echo. You can't easily return a structure, though, but you might try returning a string that declares it (see below).
There's no need to use local and unset in the function. declare creates a local variable inside a function unless told otherwise by -g. The newly created variable is always empty.
To add a single element to an empty variable, you can assign it directly, no + is needed:
The_Dictionary=([A_Key]=A_Word)
In other words
#!/bin/bash
Dictionary_Builder () {
declare -A The_Dictionary=([A_Key]=A_Word)
echo "([${!The_Dictionary[#]}]=${The_Dictionary[#]})"
}
declare -A The_Output_Dictionary="$(Dictionary_Builder)"
echo key: ${!The_Output_Dictionary[#]}
echo value: ${The_Output_Dictionary[#]}
For multiple keys and values, you need to loop over the dictionary:
Dictionary_Builder () {
declare -A The_Dictionary=([A_Key]=A_Word
[Second]=Third)
echo '('
for key in "${!The_Dictionary[#]}" ; do
echo "[$key]=${The_Dictionary[$key]}"
done
echo ')'
}
declare -A The_Output_Dictionary="$(Dictionary_Builder)"
for key in "${!The_Output_Dictionary[#]}" ; do
echo key: $key, value: ${The_Output_Dictionary[$key]}
done

Answer 2

The answer by #choroba is what I was looking for. However, my dictionary values also had white spaces in them and the above answer didn't work outright. What worked was a minor variation of the above answer.
#!/bin/bash
function Dictionary_Builder() {
declare -A dict=(['title']="Title of the song"
['artist']="Artist of the song"
['album']="Album of the song"
)
echo '('
for key in "${!dict[#]}" ; do
echo "['$key']='${dict[$key]}'"
done
echo ')'
}
declare -A Output_Dictionary="$(Dictionary_Builder)"
for key in "${!Output_Dictionary[#]}" ; do
echo "${key}: '"${Output_Dictionary[$key]}"'"
done
Note the extra single quotes on the 2nd echo line which made it possible to output values with whitespaces in them.