argument with space passed to bash script and further to executable

Hi,
I'd like to pass arguments with space inside to a bash script and further into an executable called inside the script. My bash script looks like:

Code:

---

#!/bin/bash
ARG_OPTS=""
while [[ -n "$1" ]];
        ARG_OPTS="${ARG_OPTS} $1"
        shift
done
my_executable ${ARG_OPTS}

---

one of the arguments to the executable is like

Quote:

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--options='-t 0 -v 0'

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To prevent it from being splitted by the spaces when first passing to the bash script, i.e. "--options='-t", "0", "-v" and "0", I double quote it as

Quote:

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"--options='-t 0 -v 0'"

---

So '-t 0 -v 0' as a whole will be able to preserved until reaching the command invoking the executable. However '-t 0 -v 0' is not passed as a whole into the executable, but split by spaces again. This may sounds like it is the problem of calling the executable, however when directly invoking the executable from terminal

Quote:

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my_executable --options='-t 0 -v 0'

---

could be passed successfully as argument. So can

Quote:

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my_executable --options="-t 0 -v 0"

---

.

Hope that I could explain my question clearly. Shall I change the argument format or the bash script. Really appreciate your advice!

For example look at how gcc can pass arguments through to the linker. Since these arguments can contain a space, some extra processing has to be done because shell variables don't really have the ability to act the way you want.

You could replace the argument separator character (space) with some other character. So you might pass this to your executable:

"--options=-t,0,-v,0"

It would then turn the commas back into spaces.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by lehe

Hi,
I'd like to pass arguments with space inside to a bash script and further into an executable called inside the script. My bash script looks like:

Code:

---

#!/bin/bash
ARG_OPTS=""
while [[ -n "$1" ]];
        ARG_OPTS="${ARG_OPTS} $1"
        shift
done
my_executable ${ARG_OPTS}

---

one of the arguments to the executable is like

To prevent it from being splitted by the spaces when first passing to the bash script, i.e. "--options='-t", "0", "-v" and "0", I double quote it as


So '-t 0 -v 0' as a whole will be able to preserved until reaching the command invoking the executable. However '-t 0 -v 0' is not passed as a whole into the executable, but split by spaces again. This may sounds like it is the problem of calling the executable, however when directly invoking the executable from terminal could be passed successfully as argument. So can .

Hope that I could explain my question clearly. Shall I change the argument format or the bash script. Really appreciate your advice!

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Use "$@"

Code:

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#!/bin/sh

my_executable "$@"

---

Thank you!

So if I understand correctly, brewbuck suggested to modify the source code of the executable to parse its arguments with nonspace charater as the separator instead? Is there a way without modifying the source code of the executable?

The reason why I don't use "$@" is that the arguments to the bash script is not completely those for the executable. Some of them are just arguments only to the bash script. So actually the script is like

Code:

---

#!/bin/bash
DEBUGGER=""
ARG_OPTS=""
while [[ -n "$1" ]];
        case $1 in
            --run)
                make clean
                make -j -k || exit 1
                DEBUGGER=""
                ;;
            --gdb)
                make clean
                make -j -k DEBUG=yes || exit 1
                DEBUGGER="gdb --args"
                ;;
            *)
                ARG_OPTS="${ARG_OPTS} $1" 
                ;;
        esac
        shift
done
${DEBUGGER} my_executable ${ARG_OPTS}

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