Magic associative arrays

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There are a whole lot of fun things we could do with special associative
array paramters.  Examples:

An AA named "functions" that looks up values in the shell function hash
table.  `functions foo` would be the same as `print $functions[foo]`.  The
"functions" AA could be read-only, but perhaps it would be fun to be able
to edit the function with `noglob vared functions[foo]`?

How about an special AA named "files"?  "$files[foo]" would be equivalent
to "$(<foo)".  One step further: `noglob vared files[foo]` replaces `zed`
almost entirely (except for the ZLE rebinding bits).  OK, maybe that one
is getting a little carried away ... but if the OS supports mmap() ...

Hmm; if only there were a way to cause a module to autoload upon reference
to a parameter that it defines ...

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com