I find this bug report very difficult to understand.  The bug summary says that you want to make zsh detect incorrect uses of associative arrays ... but in the expected output you are saying that the syntax check should pass in all three cases?

Why don't you simply use the syntax that works in both ksh and zsh?

typeset -A fn
fn[foo_key]=foo_val 
fn[bar_key]=bar_val

Hi Kamil,

Yes, you can use the syntax that works in both.  But they also support, and document, the multiple assignment method - the zsh wiki at:

http://zshwiki.org/home/scripting/array

gives the first example of associative array assignment as:

typeset -A buffer
buffer=( key1 val1 key2 val2 )

The syntax check should not pass in all three cases - only in test 2 (the correct multiple assignment syntax) should it pass.  Indeed, the problem is that at the moment the syntax check passes but the code is syntactically incorrect.

Hope this helps,

Paul

(In reply to Paul Wayper from comment #3)
> Yes, you can use the syntax that works in both.  But they also support, and
> document, the multiple assignment method - the zsh wiki at:
> 
> http://zshwiki.org/home/scripting/array
> 
> gives the first example of associative array assignment as:
> 
> typeset -A buffer
> buffer=( key1 val1 key2 val2 )

... and it works as documented, does not it?

> The syntax check should not pass in all three cases - only in test 2 (the
> correct multiple assignment syntax) should it pass. Indeed, the problem is
> that at the moment the syntax check passes but the code is syntactically
> incorrect.

Since shell is an interpreted language, not all "syntactical" errors could be detected without actually executing the code.

In any case, the described behavior of RHEL-7 zsh matches the behavior of upstream zsh.  Neither ksh is able detect such kinds of programming mistakes while using the -n option.  I do not think we can easily improve anything in this regard.

Hi Kamil,

I'm not sure how you go from "shell is an interpreted language" to "can't detect some syntax errors".  The '-n' option specifically says in the documentation that it does a syntax check on the script.  It doesn't mention any exceptions.

I believe what you're saying is "we must go upstream to fix this bug"; would you like to start that conversation upstream or shall I?

Thanks in advance,

Paul

(In reply to Paul Wayper from comment #5)
> I'm not sure how you go from "shell is an interpreted language" to "can't
> detect some syntax errors".

zsh can detect pretty much all syntax errors.  What I am saying is that it cannot detect some syntax errors *without* actually executing the code.  Obviously, all languages that support 'eval' and the like have to have some limitations in this regard.

> The '-n' option specifically says in the
> documentation that it does a syntax check on the script.  It doesn't mention
> any exceptions.

Which documentation?

If it says that all syntax errors are guaranteed to be reported, we just need to reword the documentation.

> I believe what you're saying is "we must go upstream to fix this bug"; would
> you like to start that conversation upstream or shall I?

Please do.

OK, this is what I've written to the zsh-workers address:

Hi there!

Sourceforge has pointed me to this list as a way to get a bug fixed in zsh.

I've discovered that an incorrect associative array declaration in zsh isn't detected via 'zsh -n script.zsh', even though it does get flagged when the script is executed.  For example:

$ cat zsh_array.zsh 
#!/usr/bin/zsh

typeset -A fn
fn=(foo_key foo_val bar_key bar_val)

printf %s\\n ${fn[foo_key]} ${fn[bar_key]}

$ cat zsh_bad_array.zsh 
#!/usr/bin/zsh

typeset -A fn
fn=(foo_key foo_val bar_key)

printf %s\\n $fn[foo_key] $fn[bar_key]

$ zsh -n zsh_array.zsh && echo $?
0
$ zsh zsh_array.zsh
foo_val bar_val

# And yet:
$ zsh -n zsh_bad_array.zsh && echo $?
0
$ zsh zsh_bad_array.zsh
/tmp/zsh_bad_array.zsh:4: bad set of key/value pairs for associative array


This syntax for associative array declaration is the one documented as correct:

http://zshwiki.org/home/scripting/array

gives the first example of associative array assignment as:

typeset -A buffer
buffer=( key1 val1 key2 val2 )

Ideally what I'd like is for zsh -n to give the same error message on an incorrect associative array declaration as zsh gives when executing the script.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

(In reply to Paul Wayper from comment #7)
> OK, this is what I've written to the zsh-workers at zsh dot org address:

... and this is the response from upstream developers (not a bug):

http://www.zsh.org/mla/workers/2016/msg00742.html

zsh (as well as other shells) is not designed to detect this kind of programming mistakes without actually executing the code.  Please suggest the customer to use the solution proposed in comment #2.