Passing arguments by reference

Question

I want to ask if it is possible to pass arguments to a script function by reference:

i.e. to do something that would look like this in C++:

Answer 1

Ok, so this question has been waiting for a 'real' solution for some time now, and I am glad to say that we can now accomplish this without using eval at all.

The key to remember is to declare a reference in both the caller as the callee, at least in my example:

#!/bin/bash

# NOTE this does require a bash version >= 4.3

set -o errexit -o nounset -o posix -o pipefail

passedByRef() {

    local -n theRef

    if [ 0 -lt $# ]; then

        theRef=$1

        echo -e "${FUNCNAME}:\n\tthe value of my reference is:\n\t\t${theRef}"

        # now that we have a reference, we can assign things to it

        theRef="some other value"

        echo -e "${FUNCNAME}:\n\tvalue of my reference set to:\n\t\t${theRef}"

    else

        echo "Error: missing argument"

        exit 1
    fi
}

referenceTester() {

    local theVariable="I am a variable"

    # note the absence of quoting and escaping etc.

    local -n theReference=theVariable

    echo -e "${FUNCNAME}:\n\tthe value of my reference is:\n\t\t${theReference}"

    passedByRef theReference

    echo -e "${FUNCNAME}:\n\tthe value of my reference is now:\n\t\t${theReference},\n\tand the pointed to variable:\n\t\t${theVariable}"

}

# run it

referenceTester