Re: easy calling of associative array?

[Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>]

On 11/02/2015 01:05 PM, Bart Schaefer wrote:
> } >        typeset -g "${1}[$2]=$3"	# quotes so [ ] isn't globbing

> In the above,
>
>      set_v ary idx val
>
> is going to invoke
>
>      typeset -g ary[idx]=val
>
> Ordinarly "typeset" inside a function body behaves like "local".  The
> -g option tells it not to do that, so that the name "ary" is taken to
> come from the calling context instead of the current function context.

I don't understand. The idea of context here is new to me.  Why is 'ary' 
not a variable
like any other?
> } BTW, as a point of list etiquette:  Responding to most posts I let my
> } lines wrap
> } but resonding to yours, which seem to alway have fixed line width, I try to
> } match that style, but looking at the returned posts from the list, they
> } sometimes
> } sproing badly. Should I  try to keep to your width, or just let lines wrap?
>
> The above is what your text would look like if I didn't run it through
> a reformatter.  It Used To Be that everyone assumed text should be
> folded to be readable on an 80-column display, which, as a guy still
> using the email program I wrote myself 20 years ago, I still do.  Then
> along came HTML format email, and everybody assumed text should never be
> wrapped at all (let the reader's UI deal with it).  Except there's still
> this pesky thing about mailing lists preferring plain text, so we end up
> with a hypbrid where text as you write it is folded to be readable at
> whatever your display width is set, but then it gets re-folded to 80
> when you send it -- except that it also keeps any real newlines you
> entered, so if you were actually trying to make it look nice, it ends
> up like the above instead.

Yes.  Very unfortunate.
>
> Exactly what you SHOULD do depends on what you're using to write your
> email.  In Thunderbird you should probably put literal line breaks only
> at the ends of paragraphs, and let it wrap other stuff as it wills.

Ok.  Gotta get a better program, I hate Tbird.
>