Re: consistency probs var & function re-use

[L A Walsh]

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> What are you talking about? Consistency between what two things?
> Are you allergic to newlines? declare -p uses raw newlines in its output
> whenever it feels they are appropriate. Even in ordinary shell variables:
>
> imadev:~$ x=$'foo\nbar'
> imadev:~$ declare -p x
> declare -- x="foo
> bar"
>
> Is that "consistent" enough for you?
----
   First problem: If you are assigning a string to a variable,
you need to put quotes around the string.  That shows that "-p"
doesn't insert newlines:

 > x="$'foo\nbar'"
 > declare -p x
 declare -- x="\$'foo\\nbar'"

   However, if that is your example showing dcl-p's rule for inserting
newlines, then given this funcdef:

  hh(){ echo "hi";}

There shouldn't be any newlines (only inserting them when user
inserted a newline via $'\n').  However, in bash's output of
that function:

 > alias my=declare pf='my -pf'
 > pf hh
 hh ()
 {
     echo "hi"
 }
---
Oops... superfluous newlines were added :-(

> Remember, a newline only takes 1 byte of memory.
>
> The output is reusable, but only if you actually use it correctly. E.g.
> stuff it into a variable and use eval "$myvar" with the double quotes.
> Or redirect it into a file and use source ./myfile.
>
> What are you trying to do? 
Read var & func defs via a 'read' of 1 line.

> What did you try? 
 x="$'foo\nbar'"
 read -r mydef< <(declare -p x)
 echo "$mydef"

 hh(){ echo hi;}
 read -r mydef< <(declare -pf hh)
 echo "$mydef"


> What happened? 
1st case worked:
declare -- x="\$'foo\nbar'"

2nd case didn't:
hh ()

> What did you expect to happen instead?
If there was a consistency, then would have expected both to work.