Reference to a bash variable whose name contains dot

Question

I have a bash variable: agent1.ip with 192.168.100.137 as its value. When I refer to it in echo like this:

echo $agent         


        

Answer 1

Is your code nested, and using functions or scripts that use ksh?

Dotted variable names are an advanced feature in ksh93. A simple case is

$ a=1
$ a.b=123
$ echo ${a.b}
123
$ echo $a
1

If you first attempt to assign to a.b, you'll get

 -ksh: a.b=123: no parent

IHTH