Re: setvalue builtin command

[Dan Douglas]

On Wednesday, April 03, 2013 11:53:48 PM konsolebox wrote:
> Hi. I made a post on this before but I haven't got a reply. I actually want
> to know what people think about the idea as I actually find a command like
> this really helpful. Anyone please?
> 
> On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 11:30 AM, konsolebox <konsolebox@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > Hi. I was wondering if we could add a builtin where we could use it as an
> > alternative for assigning values to a parameter. And thought of a builtin
> > name called setvalue. With it we could assign values to a normal variable,
> > an array, or an associative array.

This is more or less identical to the ksh88 `set -A'. If anything were to be 
added, it would probably be that. I assume Chet preferred enforcing more 
consistent syntax rather than adding something redundant to ksh93-like 
compound assignment syntax.

The primary advantages to set -A are:

 - It's the most portable way to assign multiple elements to an indexed array 
other than a separate assignment for each element.
 - The combination `set -sA' provides a means of sorting (lexicographically). 
Bash currently has no built-in way to sort an array or the positional 
parameters.
-- 
Dan Douglas