Re: Minor bug declaring arrays of integers: dcl -ai=>broken, dcl -ia=>ok

[Chet Ramey]

On 7/21/13 10:35 PM, Dan Douglas wrote:

> What's the bug? I can't reproduce this and always get "xx" no mater the 
> option 
> order.
> 
> I always assumed the -i attribute doesn't get set until after assigning the 
> values, which is why:
> 
>      $ ( declare -ia foo=(1 2 xx 3); echo "${foo[@]}" )
>     1 2 xx 3

The issue is whether or not attributes that determine how the assignment
should be treated (-a/-A) or how the variable should be created (-g) are
handled specially and affect how the value is expanded.  The question
is why -i should be omitted from that list.

There is a fairly powerful argument for backwards compatibility here:
Dan's suggestion of a workaround by quoting the rhs of the assignment
statement is a good one.

The other side of the argument is consistency.  declare -A foo=(whatever)
changes how the array indices are expanded.  Why should -i be different?

Chet
-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/