Re: question on retrieving map(-A) value w/indirect name

[Greg Wooledge]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2018 at 05:50:04PM -0700, L A Walsh wrote:
> If I have assoc-array:
> 
>  declare -A foo=([one]=11 [two]=22)
> 
> and am passing name in another var, like "fee"
> 
>  fee=foo
> 
> I tried echoing the val:
> 
>  echo ${!fee[one]}
> 
> but got nothing -- tried a few other syntaxes.

1) USE A REAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.

2) Or use bash's "declare -n" (almost-like-a-nameref) syntax.

  2a) Realize how bad "declare -n" actually is.  How it doesn't avoid the
      fundamental name conflict problem.

      
https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/048#The_problem_with_bash.27s_name_references

  2b) => USE A REAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.

3) Or redesign your code so that you don't need to pass an associative
   array to a function by reference, since bash can't actually do that.

4) Or try that god-damned HACK that two people have posted.

  4a) Realize how bad the god-damned HACK actually is.  How it doesn't
      avoid the fundamental name conflict problem (in addition to being
      a million-monkey feces-fling that just happens to not blow up in
      the current versions of bash).

  4b) => USE A REAL PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.