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In ZSH, how do you set the value of an associative array parameter to an array?

e.g.,

% declare -A a=() % a[first]=(1 2) zsh: a: attempt to set slice of associative array

And when I try and append the associative array a with the array b it seems to work but silently converts the value of b from an array to a scalar.

% declare -A a=() % declare -a b=(1 2) % print ${(t)b} array % a+=( [b]=($b) ) % print $a[b] (1 2) % print ${#a[b]} 5 % for ((i=1; i<=${#a[b]}; i++)) ; do print -n "${a[b][$i]}" ; done ; echo (1 2) %
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    are you sure that's supposed to be possible? I had the impression that ksh was the only shell to support nested data structures. But nested data structures are also a point where you should perhaps consider moving to some other programming language, even though zsh is a bit saner than the other shells :) Commented Oct 11 at 20:01
  • I'm not sure it is. I also absolutely agree that this is a use case that should be solved in a different language such as awk, perl, python, etc. As it is part of zsh's initialization process I didn't want to introduce the overhead of launching a subshell process so I was exploring zsh's array capabilities. I didn't see anything in the manual that said it "can't" be done but I suspect, as you do, that it is beyond the capabilities of the shell. Commented Oct 11 at 20:13
  • While zsh does not have direct support for storing arrays this way, you can get very close using null-separated lists. Try: local -A a=(); in=(1 2); a[fr]=${(pj:\0:)in}; out=("${(0)a[fr]}"); typeset -p out Commented Oct 13 at 5:21

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