On Wed, Mar 20, 2024, 20:44 Greg Wooledge <g...@wooledge.org> wrote: > 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 think a declare -A name makes it further -A , very important I simply struggle to figure out what the real-world application is for > some of these tangents. > >