Bash on Bash

Started using new programming language, I feel irritated and want to blog about it :)

Deleting an item from array doesn't change indexes of other items

You can have arrays in Bash – "Hooray!", I thought:

$ list=(apple banana grapes)
$ echo "length of the list: ${list[*]}"
length of the list: 3
$ for i in 0 1 2; do echo "list[$i]=${list[$i]}"; done # print list items
list[0]=apple
list[1]=banana
list[2]=grapes

So far – so good, but let's see what happens if you delete one item from this array:

$ unset list[1] # delete an element
$ echo "length of the list: ${list[*]}"
length of the list: 2
$ for i in 0 1 2; do echo "list[$i]=${list[$i]}"; done # print list items
list[0]=apple
list[1]=
list[2]=grapes

Congrats, you deleted first item, but in no way it affected second! Also note that, unlike in other programming languages, you can't rely on the "list length" operator, either! So, if you happen to delete array items, is the "solution" to keep array length in a separate variable, increase it when adding something to array, and never decrease?

Pipe creates subshell, effectively making all your variables local

You can have variables in Bash:

$ a=0     # create a variable
$ echo $a # show it
0

You can redirect unputs, and it still works:

$ a=1 < file.txt
$ echo $a
1

But if you happen to use pipe – then be careful!

$ cat file.txt | a=2
$ echo $a
1

In this case your command is running in subshell (?), and all your variables are "local". The only way to communicate back to the calling script is by using return values, changing files or writing to stdout (wrapping all your command into output="$(...)")