Trouble reading second argument in bash script

Question

I need to pass argument for commit function. When I do the commit through

./test.sh commit -m "first"

its not really committing it. believe somehow I am not passing right argument parameter either in case or function.

Here is the script

#!/usr/bin/env bash

clone () {
  git clone $1
}

commit () {
  git commit $*
}

case $1
in
   clone) clone $2 ;;
   commit) commit $2 ;;

       *) echo "Invalid Argument passed" ;;
esac

Possible duplicate of What do $? $0 $1 $2 mean in shell script?, What are the special dollar sign shell variables?, etc. Also see How to use Shellcheck, How to debug a bash script? (U&L.SE), How to debug a bash script? (SO), How to debug bash script? (AskU), Debugging Bash scripts, etc. — jww
– jww, Commented Oct 16, 2018 at 4:48
@jww: One could argue that's the case, but OP clearly knows what $1, $2 are, but not know how to shift args. A dupe involving shift would be more appropriate here — Inian
– Inian, Commented Oct 16, 2018 at 4:50
The question looks so similar to your last one - bash/shell script not reading second argument — Inian
– Inian, Commented Oct 16, 2018 at 4:55
@Inian - Yes, agreed. Grzegorz's answer looked pretty good because it talked about how arguments can move around in seemingly unexpected ways. — jww
– jww, Commented Oct 16, 2018 at 4:55

Nic3500 · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-16 04:47:01Z

1

The arguments are processed like this by bash:

./test.sh commit -m "first" 

0: ./test.sh
1: commit
2: -m
3: first

So your "first" is actually argument $3.

answered Oct 16, 2018 at 4:47

Nic3500

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2 Comments

latech Over a year ago

Thank you so much for all..really appreciate your help. so my code looks seems ok ? But somehow its not working yet. strangely i have to run twice add and commit to make this works, i believe i missing something. commit () { git commit $1 $2 } case $1 in clone) clone $2 ;; commit) commit $2 $3 ;; *) echo "Invalid Argument passed" ;; esac

Nic3500 Over a year ago

Hi, I was merely answering the parameters problem. As for git itself, I do not know git enough to provide a definitive answer.

pjh · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-16 18:17:24Z

1

To safely support multiple arguments (including ones with special characters) the function bodies should be

git clone "$@"

and

git commit "$@"

.

For the same reasons, the case code should be:

case $1 in
    clone)  clone "${@:2}" ;;
    commit) commit "${@:2}" ;;
    *)      echo "Invalid Argument passed" ;;
esac

In the functions, "$@" expands to all the function arguments, safely quoted so they are not subject to word splitting or expansions.

In the case statement, ${@:2} expands to the list of command line arguments after the first one, safely quoted.

For more information see Handling positional parameters [Bash Hackers Wiki].

edited Oct 16, 2018 at 18:17

answered Oct 16, 2018 at 18:08

pjh

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