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From: Grisha Levit <grishalevit@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug
Subject: Re: Indices of array variables are sometimes considered unset (or just display an error).
Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2018 01:03:30 -0500
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On Mon, Nov 5, 2018 at 10:38 PM Eduardo Bustamante <dualbus@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Sorry, I'm having a hard time following this email thread.

I *think* the point is that OP expected that:

(a) ${!var[@]-foo} expands to the indexes of var if ${var[@]} if set, else
    to `foo'

whereas the behavior they observed is:

(b) ${!var[@]-foo} expands to the value of the variable whose name is
stored
    in ${var[@]} or to `foo' if that variable is unset

Their expectation seems reasonable since "the variable whose name is stored
in ${var[@]}" is kind of a weird thing.