Re: "${assoc[@]@k}" doesn't get expanded to separate words within compound assignment syntax

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 12:53:07PM +0100, alex xmb sw ratchev wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 12:49 Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 07:11:34AM -0400, Zachary Santer wrote:
> > > On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 12:29 AM Lawrence Velázquez <vq@larryv.me>
> > wrote:
> > > > A couple of previous discussions:
> > > >   - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2020-12/msg00066.html
> > > >   - https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2023-06/msg00128.html
> > >
> > > There I go, reporting a bug that isn't a bug again.
> > >
> > > One would think that enabling this behavior would be the entire
> > > purpose of the alternate ( key value ) syntax. If it doesn't do that,
> > > what benefit does it give over the standard ( [key]=value ) syntax?
> > > Maybe it;s easier to use eval with?
> >
> > I believe the "X" in this X-Y problem is "I want to serialize an
> > associative array to a string, send the string to another bash script,
> > and de-serialize it back into an associative array there."
> >
> 
> as to that , simply declare -p and run that back

That will work in some cases, yes.  The problem is that it locks you
in to having the same array name and the same attributes (if any) as
the original array had.  It also runs "declare" which can create issues
with scope, if it's done inside a function.  Perhaps you wanted to
populate an array that was previously declared at some scope other
than your own, and other than global (which means adding -g wouldn't
work either).

I suppose you might argue that you could run declare -p, and then
edit out the "declare" and the attributes, and then while you're at it,
also edit the array name.  I guess that's a possible solution, but it
really seems ugly.