On Wed, 2022-08-31 at 11:11 -0400, Chet Ramey wrote: > On 8/29/22 2:03 PM, tetsu...@scope-eye.net wrote: > > > It would also help > > greatly if the shell could internally handle hierarchical data in > > variables. > > That's a fundamental change. There would have to be a better reason > to make > it than handling JSON.
My contention is not that hierarchical variables should be added just for the sake of supporting JSON. My contention is that handling a format like JSON is, in principle, a very easy problem that the shell should be well-equipped to handle; that the proper way to add functionality to a shell, when possible, is to delegate that to another program, but that writing such a program is made significantly more difficult by the shell's near-inability to communicate or store hierarchical data. That, to me, is the case for both features, providing hierarchical variables and JSON (or a different format with comparable capabilities), within the shell: Not just to support doing JSON things, but also to use that functionality to facilitate creation of tools to solve other problems. I get that you're not sold on the idea, but I wanted to try to make the case for it. I had been working on a set of loadable modules meant as a kind of proof-of-concept providing these kind of capabilities, I should really just get back to that sometime.