That [declare -g] is bad too, because it means you can't use it to set a local variable (see my sibling comment about dynamic scoping), which is surprising and

That [declare -g] is bad too, because it means you can't use it to set a local variable (see my sibling comment about dynamic scoping), which is surprising and confusing to the caller. While I agree with the parent that the whole thing is disgusting, I also recognize that it's a valid optimization technique, and it's sometimes necessary. So, if you do go down that route, I'd encourage you to do it as printf -v "$1" '%s' "$result"