Re: ${var@A}; hypothetical, related parameter transformations

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 03:05:56PM -0400, Zachary Santer wrote:
> I want a declare command, no matter what ${var@A} gives me. I have to
> write a function for that: generate_declare_command (). That function
> can work a couple of reasonable ways:

This seems rather theoretical to me.  If the associative array has
nothing in it, does it really matter whether it's nonexistent, only
declared as a scope placeholder (I think that's a thing...), or fully
declared but empty?  The second script which receives the serialized data
doesn't really care how the first script stored it, does it?  All you
really need is to have the keys and values replicated faithfully in the
second script's associative array.  If that gives you an empty hash,
then that's what you use.

I simply struggle to figure out what the real-world application is for
some of these tangents.