On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 3:50 PM, Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> wrote: > On 8/18/15 1:43 PM, Dan Douglas wrote: >> On Tuesday, August 18, 2015 9:54:55 AM CDT Isaac Good wrote: >>> Would you mind sharing the rational behind having it undocumented? >> >> Since I like guessing: the syntax for parameter expansion operators is >> currently non-extensible, so the namespace of terse operators is in limited >> supply. New syntax should be extensible to suit future needs while keeping >> the >> language minimal. This is new syntax that adds one function that will be >> rarely used. I can think of better ways to use that operator. > > This is true, and I would prefer to not set the ~ `operator' in stone until > I'm more satisfied with how it works. > > Bash-4.4 has the ${param@operator} family of expansions (inspired by a > similar feature in mksh) as the extensible syntax you're asking for. >
Ah yeah. I saw the var@Q already. That will be nice! > I assume you mean the difference betweeen ${!param[@]/followed/bysomething} > and ${!param[@]}. Yeah that sort of thing. E.g. a recent example where my best answer is still pretty bad even with fancy bash 4.3-isms. It would be quite nice to get rid of the intermediary `keys` array just to look up the keys of keys. ~ $ bash <<\EOF function rev { typeset -n _ref=$1 _ret=$2 typeset -a keys=("${!_ref[@]}") typeset key=0 for ((; key <= ${#keys[@]}; key++)); do _ret[${keys[key - 1]}]=${_ref[${keys[-key]}]} done } typeset -a a=([0]=a [1]=b [3]=c) b rev a b typeset -p b EOF declare -a b='([0]="c" [1]="b" [3]="a")' Thats maybe a little tricky. What doesn't work now is ${!_ref[@]:(-(key)):1}