Re: declare [-+]n behavior on existing (chained) namerefs

[Piotr Grzybowski]

On 29 Apr 2016, at 03:49, Grisha Levit wrote:

> There is also an issue when doing something like `declare -n r=a' in a 
> function if the same has been done in a higher scope.  Instead of creating a 
> new variable r in the function's scope, it modifies the local `a' to be a 
> self-referencing nameref..
> 
> $ declare -nt r=a; f() { declare a; declare -n r=a; declare -p a r; }; f
> declare -n a="a"    # ??
> declare -nt r="a"   # note the -t.  this is the outer $r, a new one was not 
> created

 yes, the "reference masking" is not done properly, the fix seems easy, it is a 
bug in my opinion.

> In a slightly different version, with `declare -n r; r=a', the function exits 
> with code 1 after the `r=a' statement:
> 
> $ declare -nt r=a; f() { declare a; declare -n r; r=a; declare -p a r; }; f; 
> echo $?
> 1

this is due to the fact that there is a 

bash: warning: r: circular name reference

as can be seen with slightly modified version of your script:

declare -n r=a; f() { declare a=12; declare -n r=a; r=a; declare -p a r; }; f

also should be fixed.

cheers,
pg