What is $@ and $*

binarybob0001 · 03-17-2008, 01:58 AM

I'm reading the manual for autoconf and automake and it says I should inspect these. I know they are talking about environment variables, but what specifically are they talking about?

chrism01 · 03-17-2008, 02:19 AM

http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-G...ect_03_02.html

konsolebox · 03-17-2008, 02:20 AM

Both $@ and $* represent all the arguments in a function but have different behaviors.
$@ expands into separate parameters while $* expands as a whole string and is reparsed.

for example:

Code:

a() {
  b() { echo $#; }

  # this does 'b "1" "2" "3" "4"'
  b "$@"
  # this does 'b "1 2 3 4"
  b "$*"
}
a 1 2 3 4

will print

Code:

4
1

binarybob0001 · 03-17-2008, 03:09 AM

Thanks, now it make perfect sense.