CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringbashgitfunction
ND Geek
ND Geek

Reputation: 408

re-quote string passed to bash function

I'm trying to create a function that creates a git commit.

function commit_thing {
    git add $1
    shift
    git commit $@
}

I can't quote $@, because I'm trying to retain the ability to create both a subject and a body for a commit. For example:

commit_thing thing1.txt -m "This is a subject" -m "This is a detailed body"

How should I pass the remaining variables in such a way as to quote the ones originally passed in quotes to the function, while not quoting the flags that need to be passed to the git commit command?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 86

Answers (1)

chepner
chepner

Reputation: 532303

The whole purpose of $@ is to allow individual arguments to remain quoted yet distinct. Compare

$ set -- "a b" "c d"
$ printf '%s\n' "$*"
a b c d
$ print '%s\n' "$@"
a b
c d

So you would simply write

function commit_thing {
    git add "$1"
    shift
    git commit "$@"
}

With a command like commit_thing thing1.txt -m "This is a subject" -m "This is a detailed body", the 5 arguments are thing1.txt, -m, This is a subject, -m, and This is a detailed body. After the shift, "$@" will pass the remaining arguments as-is to git commit as separate arguments, not as one single argument as "$*" would.

Upvotes: 1

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