Yikes, I missed the exec command in my example, that would certainly make it confusing..
What I meant was that the assignment works (i.e. the nameref is followed correctly), but the relevant code <http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/tree/redir.c?h=devel#n1368> doesn’t handle retrieving the value of such a nameref when it needs to do so to close the descriptor: $ declare -n ref=var[0] $ exec {ref}</dev/null $ declare -p vardeclare -a var=([0]="10") $ exec {ref}<&- bash: ref: ambiguous redirect
