bash seeing parameter as function

Question

I have this function to make make it simpeler for me to push to git. It works fine with pushing without arguments, however when I pass a parameter to the function I get -bash: parameter: command not found. For as far as I know, I am calling the function correctly.

function gitPush {
  if ($1)
    then
    if ($2)
     then
     git push $2 $1
    else
     git push origin $1
    fi
  else
    git push origin master
  fi
}

When I call it using gitPush it works fine, however gitPush branch does not work.

I would like to know what I am doing wrong and how to fix it.

I don't know if it affects the execution of the function (expect not), but I am using Putty

Tom Fenech · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-03 09:29:05Z

4

($1) isn't doing what you think it does - it is attempting to execute the command stored in the first argument, in a subshell.

To test for the existence of an argument, you can use the following:

if [[ -n $1 ]]

Or to simply count the arguments, you can use the following:

if [[ $# -eq 1 ]]

answered Dec 3, 2015 at 9:29

Tom Fenech

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marcolz · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-03 10:03:14Z

3

I guess you might do this quite a lot shorter with:

function gitPush {
    local remote=${2:-origin}
    local branch=${1:-master}
    git push "${remote}" "${branch}"
}

But all-in-all this is probably not something you would want to use anyway.

in your .gitconfig you could add:

[push]
default = tracking

That way wou will always push to the tracked remote of the current branch if you do not supply arguments.

edited Dec 3, 2015 at 10:03

answered Dec 3, 2015 at 9:34

marcolz

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3 Comments

Jelmergu Over a year ago

Thank you for showing me the shorter way of writing my function. Though it is not the answer to the question what I was doing wrong I think I will use this option to rewrite the function I have. I'll also take a look into my .gitconfig file

marcolz Over a year ago

@Jelmergu: well, you should not have tagged this "git" in the first place as it is a basic shell scripting error; git had nothing to do with that. ;-) But since you did, I thought I'd answer anyway .;-)

Jelmergu Over a year ago

aha, I thought that since I was using a function of git it should have been tagged anyway. Either way I am happy that I did tag it with git. I now have my answer and a better way to do what I wanted.

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