Re: Bash $@ expansion undocumentedly ignoring '

[DJ Mills]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 6:31 PM, suvayu ali <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello Andreas,
>
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 15:24, Andreas Marschke
> <andreas.marschke@googlemail.com> wrote:
>> it has come to my attention that bash is unexpectedly removing quotes
>> from parameters given to a script if read from within the
>> script. See attached shell-script for a full explanation.
>
> You could have put the explanation in the email, instead of an
> attachment. Its much more convenient that way.
>
>> This does not constitute that quotations in the passed parameters are
>> to be ignored/removed upon passing them back to the script.
>
> I believe this is where you are misunderstanding. The quotes are removed
> by the current instance of bash (the shell that you use to invoke the
> script). If you want to pass on the quotes as is, you would need to
> excape them with a backslash.
>
> $ ./test.sh \'bla \'foo 'bar'
> 'bla 'foo bar
>
> As you see, the first two quotes are passed on to the script, whereas
> the last two are not.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> --
> Suvayu
>
> Open source is the future. It sets us free.
>

Note that the literal quotes are NOT syntactic, they have nothing to
do with having multiple words in an argument.