On Tue, Sep 25, 2018 at 05:17:27PM -0700, L A Walsh wrote: > It struck me as it might be convenient if 'shift' could take an optional > arrayname as an argument. Would that be possible or would it cause some > incompatibility?
The biggest issue here is how you specify the arguments. Shift already takes one optional argument: the number of items to shift from the argv list. Adding a second optional argument leads to a quagmire. Do you put the optional list name first, or do you put the optional number first? If only one argument is given, is it a list name, or is it a number? (OK, granted, in bash it is not permitted to create an array whose name is strictly digits, but still.) If you wish to write an array-shifting builtin, it would be better to give it a new name. Don't blindly copy perl. It's not always the best example of language design.
