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From: grog@lemis.de
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Subject: Re: BASH -> passing cmd line params
In-Reply-To: <3.0.1.32.19970325173551.00aa5260@199.3.74.250> from John Clark at "Mar 25, 97 05:35:51 pm"
To: email@john.net (John Clark)
Date: Thu, 27 Mar 1997 18:24:28 +1030 (CST)
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
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Reply-to: grog@lemis.de (Greg Lehey)
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John Clark writes:
> Hello, I am having trouble passing a variable with a space in it as a
> single parameter.  Is there a way to do this?
>
>
> #!/bin/sh
>
> PARAM1="hello world"
> PARAM2="foo"
> PARAM3="bar"
>
> mycommand $PARAM1 $PARAM2 $PARAM3
>
>
> The output of the above script shows 4 command line variables: 1=hello,
> 2=world, 3=foo, 4=bar
>
> I would like: 1=hello world, 2=foo, 3=bar
>
> Any help would be Sure.

This is a feature, not a bug.  It isn't specific to bash; other Bourne
shell derivatives will do the same thing.  Think of how the shell resolves

  mycommand $PARAM1 $PARAM2 $PARAM3

It just replaces the $PARAMs with their contents, so you get

  mycommand hello world foo bar

Now consider what happens when you do:

  mycommand "$PARAM1" "$PARAM2" "$PARAM3"

This time you get

  mycommand "hello world" "foo" "bar"

Greg