On Mon, Dec 22, 2025 at 20:21:57 +0100, Félix Hauri via Bug reports for the GNU
Bourne Again SHell wrote:
> $ declare -A aa=( empty '' inject '$(date)' "space key" "space value" \
> '$(uptime)' injected lb \[ rb \] punc $' \t\n' )
> $ printf -v tmpString '["%s"]="%s" ' "${aa[@]@k}"
> $ declare -A "newarray=($tmpString)"
> $ declare -p newarray
> declare -A newarray=([inject]="Mon Dec 22 20:16:59 CET 2025" [lb]="["
> ["space ke
> y"]="space value" [empty]="" [punc]=$' \t\n' [rb]="]" [" 20:16:59 up 1
> days, 10:
> 18, 1 users, load average: 0.18, 0.12, 0.23"]="injected" )
So you've discovered a way that *doesn't* work. Congratulations. Now
don't use that.
So far, the ways we've discovered that *do* seem to work are:
1) printf -v string '[%q]=%q ' "${aa[@]@k}"; declare -A "new=($string)"
2) string="${aa[*]@K}"; eval declare -A "new=($string)"
3) list=("${aa[@]@k}"); eval declare -A "new=(${list[*]@Q})"
The first two serialize the associative array as a string (two different
strings). The third one dumps the array to a list, then serializes that
list as a (transient) string.
There is no known way to reconstruct an associative array directly from
a list, without first converting that list to a string.
