[its-summertime]

with bash namerefs, having a function like

    split-on-ddash outputa outputb a b c -- x y z
    for x in "${outputa[@]}"; do # ...

becomes feasible. Of course, don't do it.

[alurm]

Sure.

I have tried Bash namerefs. I found them to be kinda awkward, since you need to name them uniquely. So, you have to pretend that they are global variables, even though they are declared inside a function, which makes their usage verbose.

Here, this could look like:

  split_by_double_dash() {
    declare -n split_by_double_dash_before=$1
    declare -n split_by_double_dash_after=$2
    
    split_by_double_dash_before=()
    split_by_double_dash_after=()

    ...
  }