On Thu, Apr 04, 2013 at 02:26:34AM -0500, Dan Douglas wrote: > > 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. > > 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. > - The combination `set -sA' provides a means of sorting (lexicographically).
It's also very much like the Tcl "set" command. Another "feature" of this kind of construct is that you can put the name of the variable-to-be-assigned into another variable: ptr=some_variable setvalue "$ptr" "$foo" Which may be a good thing or a bad thing, but either way it's definitely a thing that someone will (ab)use if it's available. That said, I don't think bash needs this. Bash 4.3 is going to have "namerefs" (declare -n) to allow passing arguments by reference to a function.
