4.2 error: processing command substitution within arithmetic operation

[Rui Santos]

 Hi all,

This is my first post to this mailing list. If I'm doing anything that 
is not right, please do let me know.

While upgrading my company's Linux distribution, I also upgrade Bash to 
version 4.2-10, and found a glitch, that I consider a BUG. However I 
might be doing something wrong. Here are the details:

Try this script:
#!/bin/bash

declare -ax array
array[$(( $( echo -n 1001 ) - 1001 ))]=1

this will issue an error: line 6: 1001: command not found

If however the script is turned into:
#!/bin/bash

declare -ax array
array[$(( `echo -n 1001` - 1001 ))]=1

it works perfectly.

The first script will run without any problems on bash-4.1-9
However if, on bash 4.2-10 (where the 1st script fails), you have a 
script like:
#!/bin/bash
echo $(( $( echo -n 1001 ) - 1001 ))

it also works fine.
strange...


So, I compared subst.c files from bash-4.1-9 and bash-4.2-10 and was 
able to build a patch that it seems to make it work.
So to all you Bash guru's, can this patch be applied with no extra 
consequences ?

Thanks for all your help,

--
Regards,
Rui Santos

bash.patch-11
Description: Text document