Re: Changing the way bash expands associative array subscripts

[Chet Ramey]

On 4/5/21 6:49 PM, konsolebox wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2021 at 9:44 PM Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu> wrote:
> > On 4/1/21 3:02 PM, konsolebox wrote:
> >
> > > > To do what, exactly?
> > >
> > > To keep this working in both behaviors.
> > >
> > > declare -A a
> > > key='$(echo foo)'
> > > a[$key]=1
> > > unset 'a["$key"]'
> > > declare -p a # declare -A a=()
> >
> > I suppose. You'll be able to set compatibility levels to make this work
> > without resorting to wrappers.
>
> Is it not possible to just have an added option to unset to make it
> use old behavior without needing to use compat*?  

I don't think that's a good solution. This is behavior that I have heard
complaints about for years. I'm not in favor of encouraging its continued
use if there's a fix in place.

> Compatibility mode
> affects general behavior and this isn't always something I'll need to
> keep my scripts compatible.  In the manual I read "It's intended to be
> a temporary solution" implying the script at one point should upgrade
> its minimum version requirement and that's not what I'd want.

What is your end goal? To run the same script on different versions of
bash, or something else?

--
``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/