compgen -V array not considered assigned

[rieje]

For new checks and feature suggestions

• https://www.shellcheck.net/ (i.e. the latest commit) currently gives no useful warnings about this
• I searched through https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/issues and didn't find anything related

Here's a snippet or screenshot that shows a potential problem:

#!/bin/bash
compgen -V files -G '*'
printf "%s\n" "${files[@]}"

Here's what shellcheck currently says:

SC1254: files is referenced but not assigned

Here's what I wanted to see:

No warning, files was assigned.

[matt-kita]

#!/bin/bash
compgen -V array not considered assigned
[...]
No warning, array was assigned.

Aren't you actually misusing the -V flag in the first place?
According to https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bash.html (for Bash version 5.3, 18 May 2025, at the time of writing this)

compgen

    compgen [-V varname] [option] [word]
[...]
If the -V option is supplied, compgen stores the generated completions into the indexed array 
variable varname instead of writing them to the standard output.

[rieje]

Whoops the example is wrong, I updated it. Basically, compgen -V is a Bash builtin way to to store glob-expanded files into the array.

[matt-kita]

compgen -V files -G '*'

Sorry to be nitpicking, but to store a list of files located in your current working directory, you don't need to involve the entire bash completion facility and compgen builtin, running just shopt -s nullglob; files=(*) would most likely give the expected results ;)

Nevertheless, having a completions array indicated as "not assigned" after compgen -V completions is indeed a valid point.