Re: Issue declaring an array via a variable name

[Chet Ramey]

On 8/14/21 5:53 PM, Hunter Wittenborn wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> 
> 
> I wasn't sure if this was a bug (though it seemed quite likely for me), so I 
> went ahead and decided to post the issue here before resorting over to the 
> bug mailing list.
> 
> 
> 
> Anyway - For some reason, the following code keeps failing whenever I run it:
> 
> 
> 
> "
> 
> variable="hello"
> 
> 
> 
> declare -g "${variable}"=("world" "me")

It's a syntax error. There is an unquoted operator (`(') where the grammar
does not allow it.

`declare' does allow compound array assignment statements as arguments, and
the parser accommodates this as long as two conditions hold: the parser can
detect that the first word of a simple command is `declare' and the
argument is a valid assignment statement. In this case, the second fails,
since `"${variable}"' is not a valid shell identifier. That renders the
argument not a valid assignment statement.


-- 
``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/