>Is this enough of a special case to make it different? Well, to me the @A and @a expansion operators always looked different from all the others as they expand to the *attributes* of the variable rather than to a function of the variable's *value*. They almost seemed like faster versions of declare -p. Namerefs are transparent for get-value/set-value type operations. Should they be transparent for attribute-focused expansions as well? Namerefs do have unique attributes of their own that the code may want to efficiently examine.
On Friday, October 17, 2025 at 12:49:10 PM PDT, Chet Ramey <[email protected]> wrote: Interesting question. In every other word expansion, referencing a nameref variable performs the resolution and uses the variable the nameref resolves to. The only places you can get to the nameref directly are `declare' and `unset'. Is this enough of a special case to make it different? -- ``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU [email protected] http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
