On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Dan Douglas <orm...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wednesday, April 03, 2013 11:53:48 PM konsolebox wrote: > > Hi. I made a post on this before but I haven't got a reply. I actually > want > > to know what people think about the idea as I actually find a command > like > > this really helpful. Anyone please? > > > > On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 11:30 AM, konsolebox <konsole...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > > > Hi. I was wondering if we could add a builtin where we could use it as > an > > > alternative for assigning values to a parameter. And thought of a > builtin > > > name called setvalue. With it we could assign values to a normal > variable, > > > an array, or an associative array. > > This is more or less identical to the ksh88 `set -A'. If anything were to > be > added, it would probably be that. I assume Chet preferred enforcing more > consistent syntax rather than adding something redundant to ksh93-like > compound assignment syntax. > I actually had the idea based from ksh93 but unfortunately set -A only assigns multiple values for indexed arrays starting at subscript 0 and won't allow specific positions like how we could do it in VAR=(...) e.g. VAR=([1]="A" "B" [2]="C") (noting for later that B gets overrided with C). Moreover it won't assign values for normal variables like 'setvalue VAR value'; and add values for associative arrays like 'setvalue -A VAR "key1" "value1" "key2" "value2"'. > > The primary advantages to set -A are: > > - It's the most portable way to assign multiple elements to an indexed > array > other than a separate assignment for each element. > Yes but it would only give us limit to that feature. > - The combination `set -sA' provides a means of sorting > (lexicographically). > Bash currently has no built-in way to sort an array or the positional > parameters. > Well if we are to use another more capable function then we don't really have to follow the rule. And I believe that that could be included as well (setvalue -as), but we don't really have to add the sorting feature for now if it would be difficult or heavy to implement. Also to add, having -a for indexed arrays and -A for associative arrays would be less confusing since local, typeset, and declare statements use them likewise. Just came up. We could also add another option to make setvalue -a [-i] act like VAR+=(...). Ross
