probable bug: already assigned associative array elements cannot be used in default assignment of another element of same array

[jghub]

did not know how to better describe this behaviour (I use this : "${var:=val}" construct for default value assignments in a certain context since it works with set -u if var is not defined yet):

unset x
typeset -A x
x[a]=1
y=${x[a]}
: "${x[b]:=${x[a]}}"
: "${x[c]:=$y}"
print -v x

result:

(
        [a]=1
        [b]=
        [c]=1
)

so x[b] does not pick up the value of x[a] as it should (same with legacy ksh93u+, bash behaves as intended). looks like a bug?

[McDutchie]

Hey @hyenias, you still around? This is the sort of bug you used to fix :)

May or may not be related: 9f2389e, 5aba0c7, d4adc8f

[hyenias]

I am here just been working on another project of mine. I just looked at it and same thing happens not just on associative arrays but index arrays as well--perhaps all container types.

A similar thing happened with multidimensional assignments I helped fix. Basically, ksh was not setup to handle pointing back to itself. My guess is that the pointer is being moved/reused (because the node did not change) when the second lookup occurs and screws up what was the assignment pointer reference. I could totally be wrong.

Might take a months to come up with something.