Re: Changing the way bash expands associative array subscripts

[Chet Ramey]

On 3/15/21 8:12 PM, Chet Ramey wrote:
> I'm kicking around a change to associative array subscript expansion that
> would basically force the equivalent of `assoc_expand_once' on all the
> time, with additional changes to prevent unwanted double expansion in an
> arithmetic expression context. The option would still exist, and still be
> settable and unsettable, but have little to no effect in default mode.
>
> For instance,
>
> declare -A assoc
> key='x],b[$(echo uname >&2)'
>
> (( assoc[$key]++ ))
> declare -p assoc
>
> would display
>
> declare -A assoc=(["x],b[\$(echo uname >&2)"]="1" )
>
> This is relatively straightforward to explain to people.
>
> It's also pretty straightforward to do for internal shell commands and
> expansions: things like expression evaluation as part of word expansion,
> arithmetic commands, conditional commands, and so on.

The latest push to the devel branch implements this.

It doesn't do anything with the shell builtins yet, beyond allowing
assignment to `*' and `@' associative array keys.

Chet

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