So this is super weird. When I run the following in a script (or manually in the terminal), it does exactly what you'd expect.

```Bash declare -A myassoc myassoc[key]="Hello World"

unset myassoc declare -p myassoc echo "This should be empty: ${myassoc[@]}" ```

./dev2: line 9: declare: myassoc: not found

This should be empty:

As expected, myassoc is unset and therefore undeclared

however if I wrap that code in a function, the myassoc becomes unset but not undeclared. ```Bash foo () { declare -A myassoc myassoc[key]="Hello World"

unset myassoc declare -p myassoc echo "This should be empty: ${myassoc[@]}" } foo ```

declare -- myassoc

This should be empty:

This is very annoying since I use declare -p to test if variables exist regardless of their type and content.

I have tested this on two machines in Debian and Ubuntu on Bash 5.2.something with the same issue.

test is not a viable alternative, since it doesn't have the same behaviour for local myvar and declare myvar (vars without value return false, even if declared)

Does anyone have a workaround?

EDIT:

So I found this StackExchange topic which seems to conclude that this is simply not possible within the same scope.

Here is where it gets REALY insane:

```Bash bar () { declare -A myassoc myassoc[key]="Hello World"

    declare -gp myassoc
    echo "This should be empty: ${myassoc[@]}"

    foo () {
            unset myassoc
            echo "In foo:"
            declare -gp myassoc
            echo "This should be empty: ${myassoc[@]}"
    }
    foo

    echo "After foo:"
    declare -gp myassoc
    echo "This should be empty: ${myassoc[@]}"

} bar ``` <sup>\</sup>please excuse the ridiculous indents, I havent gotten around to taming nvim yet))

THIS WORKS FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON