Re: Changing the way bash expands associative array subscripts

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Tue, 16 Mar 2021 13:26:30 +0100
    From:        Alex fxmbsw7 Ratchev <fxmbsw7@gmail.com>
    Message-ID:  
<CAALKErHuHduuMLBnhXzxuoEVqT-cjJeeVBV8f7WQO=p09Ca75w@mail.gmail.com>

  | no idea about your internal rules of keyword and builtin but clearly its
  | gotta parse it at most 1. level otherwise its big security fault isnt it

No, it isn't.   No more than
        cd /; rm -fr *
is a "big security fault" (in the shell).   Users who do
stupid things might be a big security fault, but it is not the
shell's job to stop that (if you think you need that help,
find some shell that still implements restricted mode, if there
are any (does bash?) and use that, then you'll be fairly well
protected - you also won't be able to do much).

  | its a shell fuctionality keyword, unset, so ..

Lots of things are what seems to be shell functionality, that
changes nothing.   If you don't want word splitting, add quotes.
Your responsibility.

greg@wooledge.org said:
  | I would not complain if unset became a shell keyword, and had a complete
  | revamp of its behavior.

I would.   keywords cannot be overridden by functions, and so should be
used only where absolutely required (which means, really, that in order to
work, they require a magic syntax, that the shell must implement).
And yes '[[' being a keyword, is, IMO, a mistake.   unset requires
no more than regular shell parsing, and should be left alone.

kre