Passing a string with spaces as a function argument in bash

Question

I m writing a bash script where I need to pass a string containing spaces to a function in my bash script   For example      bin bash  myFunction       echo  1     echo  2     echo  3    myFunction  firstString   second string with spaces   thirdString    When run  the output I d expect is   firstString second string with spaces thirdString   However  what s actually output is   firstString second string   Is there a way to pass a string with spaces as a single argument to a function in bash

User · Answer

You could have an extension of this problem in case of your initial text was set into a string type variable, for example:

function status(){    
  if [ $1 != "stopped" ]; then
     artist="ABC";
     track="CDE";
     album="DEF";
     status_message="The current track is $track at $album by $artist";
     echo $status_message;
     read_status $1 "$status_message";
  fi
}

function read_status(){
  if [ $1 != "playing" ]; then
    echo $2
  fi
}

In this case if you don't pass the status_message variable forward as string (surrounded by "") it will be split in a mount of different arguments.

"$variable": The current track is CDE at DEF by ABC

$variable: The

User · Answer

The simplest solution to this problem is that you just need to use    for space separated arguments when running a shell script      bin bash myFunction       echo  1   echo  2   echo  3   myFunction  firstString     Hello World     thirdString

User · Answer

Your definition of myFunction is wrong   It should be   myFunction           same as before     or   function myFunction         same as before     Anyway  it looks fine and works fine for me on Bash 3 2 48

User · Answer

Simple solution that worked for me -- quoted     Test       set -x    grep       etc hosts    set  x   Test -i  3 rb    grep -i  3 rb   etc hosts   I could verify the actual grep command  thanks to set -x

User · Answer

Another solution to the issue above is to set each string to a variable  call the function with variables denoted by a literal dollar sign     Then in the function use eval to read the variable and output as expected      usr bin ksh  myFunction       eval string1   1    eval string2   2    eval string3   3     echo  string1     string1     echo  string2     string2     echo  string3     string3      var1  firstString  var2  second string with spaces  var3  thirdString   myFunction     var1       var2       var3    exit 0   Output is then       string1   firstString     string2   second string with spaces     string3   thirdString   In trying to solve a similar problem to this  I was running into the issue of UNIX thinking my variables were space delimeted  I was trying to pass a pipe delimited string to a function using awk to set a series of variables later used to create a report  I initially tried the solution posted by ghostdog74 but could not get it to work as not all of my parameters were being passed in quotes  After adding double-quotes to each parameter it then began to function as expected    Below is the before state of my code and fully functioning after state   Before - Non Functioning Code     usr bin ksh                                                                                     Setup Function To Extract Each Field For The Error Report                                                                                  getField      detailedString   1    fieldNumber  2      Retrieves Column   fieldNumber  From The Pipe Delimited   detailedString         And Strips Leading And Trailing Spaces   echo   detailedString    awk -F     -v VAR   fieldNumber     print  VAR      sed  s     t     s    t          while read LINE do   var1   LINE       Below Does Not Work Since There Are Not Quotes Around The 3   iputId   getField    var1   3  done lt   someFile   exit 0   After - Functioning Code     usr bin ksh                                                                                     Setup Function To Extract Each Field For The Report                                                                                  getField      detailedString   1    fieldNumber  2      Retrieves Column   fieldNumber  From The Pipe Delimited   detailedString         And Strips Leading And Trailing Spaces   echo   detailedString    awk -F     -v VAR   fieldNumber     print  VAR      sed  s     t     s    t          while read LINE do   var1   LINE       Below Now Works As There Are Quotes Around The 3   iputId   getField    var1    3   done lt   someFile   exit 0

User · Answer

I m 9 years late but a more dynamic way would be  function myFunction      for i in       do echo   i   done

User · Answer

you should put quotes and also  your function declaration is wrong   myFunction         echo   1      echo   2      echo   3      And like the others  it works for me as well  Tell us what version of shell you are using

User · Answer

Had the same kind of problem and in fact the problem was not the function nor the function call  but what I passed as arguments to the function   The function was called from the body of the script - the  main  - so I passed  st1 a b   st2 c d   st3 e f  from the command line and passed it over to the function using myFunction      The    causes the problem as it expands into a set of characters which will be interpreted in the call to the function using whitespace as a delimiter   The solution was to change the call to the function in explicit argument handling from the  main  towards the function   the call would then be myFunction   1    2    3  which will preserve the whitespace inside strings as the quotes will delimit the arguments      So if a parameter can contain spaces  it should be handled explicitly throughout all calls of functions   As this may be the reason for long searches to problems  it may be wise never to use    to pass arguments       Hope this helps someone  someday  somewhere     Jan

[bash] Passing a string with spaces as a function argument in bash

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