Re: Changing the way bash expands associative array subscripts

[Ilkka Virta]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2021 at 6:53 PM Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:

> In that case, I have no qualms about proposing that unset 'a[@]' and
> unset 'a[*]' be changed to remove only the array element whose key is
> '@' or '*', respectively, and screw backward compatibility.
>

That also seems to be what Ksh and Zsh do.

$ zsh -c 'k=@; typeset -A a=("$k" at foo 123); typeset -p a; unset "a[$k]";
typeset -p a;'
typeset -A a=( @ at foo 123 )
typeset -A a=( foo 123 )
$ ksh -c 'k=@; typeset -A a=([$k]=at [foo]=123); typeset -p a; unset a[$k];
typeset -p a;'
typeset -A a=([@]=at [foo]=123)
typeset -A a=([foo]=123)

Both also have issues with unset a[$k] when k="x] b[y", btw.

What konsolebox said about a[$k]=() works in my Zsh for indexed arrays, but
not associative ones.
(It replaces an array slice, so can also be used to insert elements in the
middle.)