Thanks Grisha,
Sorry for putting you through analysing my faulty example.
Phil
On 16 May 2016 at 05:58, Grisha Levit <grishale...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 4:42 PM, phil colbourn <philcolbo...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > # here, M=2
>>
>>
> It's not -- the value of $M here is the string "F[word]". Your print
> function reports the value of "$((M*1))", which is, in fact "2": inside the
> arithmetic expression "M" is expanded to "F[word]" which is expanded to "2".
>
> > # without changing M, it is now 3!!!!!!
>
> Exactly, M does not change, it is still "F[word]". But since F[word]
> changes, the value of $((M*1)) does change to reflect the new value of
> F[word].
>
> Instead of M=F[$W], I think you want to be doing M=${F[$W]}.
>
