variable indirection and arrays ?

[Jorma Laaksonen]

Hello!

I cannot find any documentation that would tell me whether and how it
is possible to do variable indiriction to arrays.

This works:

bash-2.05a$ a=xxx
bash-2.05a$ b=a
bash-2.05a$ echo $a
xxx
bash-2.05a$ echo ${!b}
xxx

But this doesn't:

bash-2.05a$ a=(xxx yyy zzz)
bash-2.05a$ b=a
bash-2.05a$ echo ${a[@]}
xxx yyy zzz
bash-2.05a$ echo ${!b[@]}
xxx

(because I would like to see "xxx yyy zzz" also on the last line!)

So, I would like to refer to the whole array $a with $b but that
way it doesn't work because [@] is expanded as part of expression
b[@], not as part of a[@] after substitution !b := a .

Any solutions ?

Yours,

Jorma Laaksonen

-- 
Jorma Laaksonen                                 email: jorma.laaksonen@hut.fi
Dr. of Science in Technology, Docent            http://www.cis.hut.fi/jorma/
Laboratory of Computer and Information Science  tel. +358-9-4513269
Helsinki University of Technology               fax. +358-9-4513277
P.O.Box 5400, Fin-02015 HUT, Finland            mob. +358-50-3058719