Passing a string with spaces as a function argumen

Question

I'm writing a bash script where I need to pass a string containing spaces to a function in my bash script.

For example:

#!/bin/bash

myFunction
{
    echo $1
    echo $2
    echo $3
}

myFunction "firstString" "second string with spaces" "thirdString"

When run, the output I'd expect is:

firstString
second string with spaces
thirdString

However, what's actually output is:

firstString
second
string

Is there a way to pass a string with spaces as a single argument to a function in bash?

Answer 1

Your definition of myFunction is wrong. It should be:

myFunction()
{
    # same as before
}

or:

function myFunction
{
    # same as before
}

Anyway, it looks fine and works fine for me on Bash 3.2.48.

Answer 2

you should put quotes and also, your function declaration is wrong.

myFunction()
{
    echo "$1"
    echo "$2"
    echo "$3"
}

And like the others, it works for me as well. Tell us what version of shell you are using.

Answer 3

You could have an extension of this problem in case of your initial text was set into a string type variable, for example:

function status(){    
  if [ $1 != "stopped" ]; then
     artist="ABC";
     track="CDE";
     album="DEF";
     status_message="The current track is $track at $album by $artist";
     echo $status_message;
     read_status $1 "$status_message";
  fi
}

function read_status(){
  if [ $1 != "playing" ]; then
    echo $2
  fi
}

In this case if you don't pass the status_message variable forward as string (surrounded by "") it will be split in a mount of different arguments.

"$variable": The current track is CDE at DEF by ABC

$variable: The

Answer 4

Im 9 years late but a more dynamic way would be

function myFunction 
{
   for i in $*; do echo $i; done;
}

Answer 5

Another solution to the issue above is to set each string to a variable, call the function with variables denoted by a literal dollar sign \$. Then in the function use eval to read the variable and output as expected.

#!/usr/bin/ksh

myFunction()
{
  eval string1="$1"
  eval string2="$2"
  eval string3="$3"

  echo "string1 = ${string1}"
  echo "string2 = ${string2}"
  echo "string3 = ${string3}"
}

var1="firstString"
var2="second string with spaces"
var3="thirdString"

myFunction "\${var1}" "\${var2}" "\${var3}"

exit 0

Output is then:

    string1 = firstString
    string2 = second string with spaces
    string3 = thirdString

In trying to solve a similar problem to this, I was running into the issue of UNIX thinking my variables were space delimeted. I was trying to pass a pipe delimited string to a function using awk to set a series of variables later used to create a report. I initially tried the solution posted by ghostdog74 but could not get it to work as not all of my parameters were being passed in quotes. After adding double-quotes to each parameter it then began to function as expected.

Below is the before state of my code and fully functioning after state.

Before - Non Functioning Code

#!/usr/bin/ksh

#*******************************************************************************
# Setup Function To Extract Each Field For The Error Report
#*******************************************************************************
getField(){
  detailedString="$1"
  fieldNumber=$2

  # Retrieves Column ${fieldNumber} From The Pipe Delimited ${detailedString} 
  #   And Strips Leading And Trailing Spaces
  echo ${detailedString} | awk -F '|' -v VAR=${fieldNumber} '{ print $VAR }' | sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
}

while read LINE
do
  var1="$LINE"

  # Below Does Not Work Since There Are Not Quotes Around The 3
  iputId=$(getField "${var1}" 3)
done<${someFile}

exit 0

After - Functioning Code

#!/usr/bin/ksh

#*******************************************************************************
# Setup Function To Extract Each Field For The Report
#*******************************************************************************
getField(){
  detailedString="$1"
  fieldNumber=$2

  # Retrieves Column ${fieldNumber} From The Pipe Delimited ${detailedString} 
  #   And Strips Leading And Trailing Spaces
  echo ${detailedString} | awk -F '|' -v VAR=${fieldNumber} '{ print $VAR }' | sed 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
}

while read LINE
do
  var1="$LINE"

  # Below Now Works As There Are Quotes Around The 3
  iputId=$(getField "${var1}" "3")
done<${someFile}

exit 0

Answer 6

The simplest solution to this problem is that you just need to use \" for space separated arguments when running a shell script:

#!/bin/bash
myFunction() {
  echo $1
  echo $2
  echo $3
}
myFunction "firstString" "\"Hello World\"" "thirdString"