Unset readonly variable in bash

Actually, you can unset a readonly variable. but I must warn that this is a hacky method. Adding this answer, only as information, not as a recommendation. Use it at your own risk. Tested on ubuntu 13.04, bash 4.2.45.

This method involves knowing a bit of bash source code & it's inherited from this answer.

$ readonly PI=3.14
$ unset PI
-bash: unset: PI: cannot unset: readonly variable
$ cat << EOF| sudo gdb
attach $$
call unbind_variable("PI")
detach
EOF
$ echo $PI

$

A oneliner answer is to use the batch mode and other commandline flags, as provided in F. Hauri's answer:

$ sudo gdb -ex 'call unbind_variable("PI")' --pid=$$ --batch

sudo may or may not be needed based on your kernel's ptrace_scope settings. Check the comments on vip9937's answer for more details.

I tried the gdb hack above because I want to unset TMOUT (to disable auto-logout), but on the machine that has TMOUT set as read only, I'm not allowed to use sudo. But since I own the bash process, I don't need sudo. However, the syntax didn't quite work with the machine I'm on.

This did work, though (I put it in my .bashrc file):

# Disable the stupid auto-logout
unset TMOUT > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
    gdb <<EOF > /dev/null 2>&1
 attach $$
 call unbind_variable("TMOUT")
 detach
 quit
EOF
fi

In zsh,

% typeset +r PI
% unset PI

_{(Yes, I know the question says bash. But when you Google for zsh, you also get a bunch of bash questions.)}