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indirection as an lvalue


From: Bill Gradwohl
Subject: indirection as an lvalue
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:49:43 -0600

It appears that indirection can only be used as an rvalue. Is there any
way to use indirection as an lvalue?

This is a trivial example, but gives you the idea.
for x in 'VAR_A' 'VAR_B' 'VAR_C'; do
   # What I'd like to say is 
   !x="hello" 
done

resulting in 3 variables getting assigned a value, the equivalent of:
VAR_A="hello"
VAR_B="hello"
VAR_C="hello"

My real world need is to assign temporary file names to named variables.

makeTempFileName=''
for x in 'TEMPLOG' 'TEMPFILELEFT' 'TEMPFILERIGHT'; do
   makeTemp "${x}"   # function that does a lot of processing and
                     # sets makeTempFileName equal
                     # to /tmp/blahblah.??????
   !x="${makeTempFileName}"
done 

After the loop finishes, I want to use ${TEMPLOG}, ${TEMPFILELEFT} and
${TEMPFILERIGHT} throughout the script.


BTW - I ran thru the archives via a search for 'indirection' and for the
longest time was confused by references to address@hidden scattered
throughout the code examples. Here's an example:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2002-11/msg00085.html

I did a man bash looking for address@hidden thinking its some new
facility I was unaware of. Made me feel pretty silly afterwards 8-)

What is that supposed to be? The references presented by the search were
largely unusable because of it.

-- 
Bill Gradwohl

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