Re: [Help-bash] Why bash does not recoganize array type smartly?

[Stephane Chazelas]

2016-03-16 13:39:11 +0000, Dan Douglas:
[...]
> Also as I mentioned - without a built-in zip/unzip function or any way
> to directly get the keys/values at once, you have to write that
> function yourself, which requires at least a few loops that negate the
> purpose of having alternating keys/values in assignments.
[...]

In zsh:

${(k)hash} gives you the keys
$hash or ${(v)hash} gives you the values
${(kv)hash} gives you keys and values zipped

keys=(foo bar)
values=(12 5)
h=(${keys:^values})

to zip.

There are a lot of other ${(flags)parameter}. That tries to
give a more consistent approach than separate operators of
different shapes not easy to cumulate (like ${!var},
${var,asd}...), though zsh already ran out of letters for them...

You have such flags at different levels in zsh
(*(globqualifier), ${(flag)var}, $var[(flag)key], not to mention
csh style $var:modifiers), it takes years of practice to
remember them all. But if you're a vim user, you're used to it
;-).

-- 
Stephane