[Help-bash] Would adding a variable like BASH_RETURN make sense?

[Peng Yu]

Hi,

$() is quite expensive.

Would it make sense to add a variable like BASH_RETURN so that
functions can optionally write results to it for later commands to
retrieve?

Due to the especially of the proposed BASH_RETURN, I think that it
probably should not be a regular global variable. I'd expect that
there should some specific features (although I am not quite clear
what it should be) associated with it to make it really useful.

$ ./main.sh
time for ((i=0;i<1000;++i))
do
x=$(f)
done
1.445

time for ((i=0;i<1000;++i))
do
g
done
0.024

$ cat main.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# vim: set noexpandtab tabstop=2:

function f {
echo 42
}

function g {
x=42
}

TIMEFORMAT=%R
set -v
time for ((i=0;i<1000;++i))
do
x=$(f)
done

time for ((i=0;i<1000;++i))
do
g
done