On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 08:51:16PM +0100, Andreas Schwab wrote: > On Feb 03 2018, Torsten Bögershausen <tboegi@xxxxxx> wrote: > > > What is "declare -g" good for ? > > -g create global variables when used in a shell function; otherwise > ignored > > When used in a function, `declare' makes NAMEs local, as with the `local' > command. The `-g' option suppresses this behavior. I think the bigger question is why one would use "declare -g" instead of just assigning the variable with "var=value". Glancing at the code, I suspect it is because the name of the variable itself needs expanded. If that's the case, we could use eval instead, like: diff --git a/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash b/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash index 3cc815be0d..204d620ff7 100644 --- a/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash +++ b/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash @@ -297,7 +297,7 @@ __gitcomp_builtin () eval "options=\$$var" if [ -z "$options" ]; then - declare -g "$var=$(__git ${cmd/_/ } --git-completion-helper)" + eval "$var=\$(__git \${cmd/_/ } --git-completion-helper)" eval "options=\$$var" fi -Peff