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List of pending patches about named references

X-seq: zsh-workers 54178
From: Philippe Altherr <philippe.altherr@xxxxxxxxx>
To: Zsh hackers list <zsh-workers@xxxxxxx>
Subject: List of pending patches about named references
Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2026 01:15:46 +0100
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Archived-at: <https://zsh.org/workers/54178>
List-id: <zsh-workers.zsh.org>

Here is a list of my patches that are still pending:

- Simplify resolve_nameref and stethoscope - 54063

- Fix handling of dangling references to work for all of them - 54047

- Fix rebound refs to behave the same as newly bound ones - 54048 (depends on 54047)

- Never emit warning about valid nameref option - 54122

- Fix PM_TYPE to also include PM_NAMEREF - 53776

Are these still on someone's radar? Or were some of them rejected?

I still have a long list of known issues, open questions, and things to investigate. I would have time and interest to work on these but it's unclear to me whether the same is true for the maintainers of Zsh. I could describe issues, propose solutions, and write patches but it's not worthwhile if no maintainers have time and/or interest in at least reading and responding to proposals, and reviewing and committing patches.

Just one example among many more. There are many known bugs caused by named references to subscripted variables and there are probably even more we are still unaware of. In workers/54088, Bart said that in hindsight it was maybe not a good idea to allow them. Mikael suggested that we remove them. I strongly supported the idea. That was in November. I haven't seen any followup since then. Did maintainers discuss this privately? And come to a conclusion? I was thinking of preparing a patch that does the job but it's not clear to me whether that work would be welcome. I was also hoping to do it once Simplify resolve_nameref and stethoscope - 54063 was committed but that never happened.

Named references are in my opinion a great addition to Zsh. However, I think that they currently still suffer from way too many issues to be released. I would very much like to work on addressing these issues but that only makes sense if at least some maintainers have time and interest to collaborate.

Philippe

Follow-Ups:
- Re: List of pending patches about named references
  - From: Bart Schaefer

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