Re: Variable expansion inside of functions

[Aaron Schrab <aaron@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 13:33 +0100 18 Apr 2026, Klaus Ethgen <Klaus@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Here is my definition:
> ```
>   for i in pdfgrep rg
>   do
>      if whence -p "$i" >&-
>      then
>         "$i"()
>         {

[snip]

>            command "$i" "$arg[@]"
>         }
>      fi
>   done
> ```

[snip]

> Is there any way to evaluate $i inside the function definition; but 
> only that variable?

As far as I know, there isn't a way to do that.

Are you trying to do this only in zsh, or are you looking for something 
that would work in bash as well? For just zsh, unless you've unset the 
FUNCTION_ARGZERO option you should be able to use "$0" for that inside 
of the function definition.

Also, unless you've unset the MULTI_FUNC_DEF option you could also 
eliminate the loop if not for the checking if the command exists. It 
might be clearer to have the loop just build up a $cmds array (I'd call 
it $commands, but zsh already defines that) of the ones that you want to 
wrap and then define the functions outside the loop. I think which way 
to do it is a question of taste.

And, with the default options (if SH_WORD_SPLIT isn't set) you can just 
use $arg unquoted when calling the original command. You don't need the 
quotes around $0 (or $i) either. Although I do tend to still quote 
things to keep in the habit, since I often need to write scripts for 
bash or even sh.

```
() {
  local -a cmds
  for i in pdfgrep rg
  do
    (( $+commands[$i] )) && cmds+=$i
  done

  $commands() {
    # build $arg
    command $0 $arg
  }
}
```

I wrapped that in an anonymous function (which would be immediately run 
and then discarded) so that $cmds could be kept local.