Re: declare -x non-exportable variable types

[Léa Gris]

Le 25/02/2022 à 16:49, Chet Ramey écrivait :

> You can't export array variables, period. 
> You can't export attributes, only variable names and values. 
> You still can't export attributes. 
> There is no way to export attributes

Chet, I heard you, I understood it and I knew it before, while I was 
writing my message, and still now.

It feels like that you were either in a bad mood or that I didn't manage 
to express my remarks and thoughts as clearly as I would have liked.

I'm sorry for what happened and I didn't expect to receive such a tense 
reaction.

Now that you and I are, were and still are (I reassure you) in absolute 
agreement with: "Bash variable attributes and, or arrays are 
incompatible with environment variables" (undisputed fact)...

Is it possible that: if these variables are passed explicitly as 
environment variables with -x or export :

- Either Bash returns an error because of "variable flags are 
incompatible with the environment, and it's a mistake to export Bash 
variables with flags", rather than having different behaviours (pass 
value, nothing, name...) based on the original Bash variable flags/type?

- Or that Bash should now be able to "convert" the value as it does now, 
but in a more consistent way?

- Or that the documentation contains an explicit description of what 
happens when one tries to export a Bash variable with flags/types (even 
just documented as: "The result of exporting Bash variables with 
attributes is indeterminate"), which might be an appropriate clarification?


--
Léa Gris