FWIW, something like this works currently. This pattern is useful in a
bunch of situations where the shell wants to assign to a fixed
variable name. (getopts being another).
~ $ bash /dev/fd/9 9<<\EOF
function mkProcs {
typeset -n COPROC ref=$1
set -- "${ref[@]}"
for COPROC; do
coproc {
typeset status=$((RANDOM%255))
echo "${!COPROC} status: $status"
return "$status"
}
COPROC[2]=$COPROC_PID
done
for COPROC; do
echo "${!COPROC}: $(cat <&"${COPROC[0]}"; wait "${COPROC[2]}") $?"
done
}
typeset -a coprocs=({a..f}) "${coprocs[@]}"
mkProcs coprocs
EOF
/dev/fd/9: line 4: warning: execute_coproc: coproc [7768:COPROC] still exists
/dev/fd/9: line 4: warning: execute_coproc: coproc [7769:COPROC] still exists
/dev/fd/9: line 4: warning: execute_coproc: coproc [7770:COPROC] still exists
/dev/fd/9: line 4: warning: execute_coproc: coproc [7771:COPROC] still exists
/dev/fd/9: line 4: warning: execute_coproc: coproc [7772:COPROC] still exists
a: a status: 216 216
b: b status: 90 90
c: c status: 196 196
d: d status: 87 87
e: e status: 191 191
/dev/fd/9: line 13: "${COPROC[0]}": Bad file descriptor
f: 154
... Not sure why that last iteration always fails. I might want to
experiment with reducing the limitation that makes this only work
within a function on for loops over positional parameters. I know
that's how it is in ksh but I've never found that it's necessary.
