Spaces in bash parameters

rose_bud4201 · 03-09-2005, 01:26 PM

*bangs head on monitor*

There must be some way to do this, but I can't seem to find it. For purely educational reasons, I am trying to figure out how to pass multiple-word parameters, i.e. "This is me", to a bash script, and have it evaluate correctly.
Inside the script, echoing $1 prints out "This is me" correctly, but the variable is not valid in if statements.

$ cat ./testscript.sh
#!/bin/bash

echo $1
if [ $1 = "This is me" ]; then
echo "Yay"
else
echo "No..."
fi
$ ./testscript.sh "This is me"
This is me
./testscript.sh: line 4: [: too many arguments
No...

Escaping the spaces (./testscript.sh "This\ is\ me") doesn't seem to work, and I'm not sure what else to try

Thanks!

drisay · 03-09-2005, 01:37 PM

just add double quotes around your $1 in the if statement

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo $1
if [ "$1" = "This is me" ]; then
echo "Yay"
else
echo "No..."
fi

deiussum · 03-09-2005, 01:38 PM

Try putting quotes around $1 in the if line. Like so:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo $1
if [ "$1" = "This is me" ]; then
echo "Yay"
else
echo "No..."
fi

Edit: Beaten to it...

rose_bud4201 · 03-10-2005, 08:29 AM

Oh, how very cool

I wasn't aware that one *could* put quotes around a variable!

Thanks very much, both of you!!

chrism01 · 03-11-2005, 12:21 AM

Very useful trick when dealing with filenames with spaces in them ... usually when dealing with Windows partitions/users...
Be aware that a lot of Unix cmds don't behave well with filenames with spaces in them, so try to avoid/convert as needed...

bigearsbilly · 03-11-2005, 06:57 AM

when using 'test' it's advisable to always
quote, otherwise it will often bomb out with spaces or
null variables
e.g:

Code:

[ -f "$filename" ] && echo OK || echo doh