checking first argument for tag in bash script

kristinu · October 18, 2012, 3:34pm

I have a bash script where I pass an argument

./chris.bash "\argv Test"

I want to detect if the user supplied \argv at the start of the argument

rdrtx1 · October 18, 2012, 4:24pm

 echo "$1" | grep -q "^[\\]argv" || echo Invalid argument

kristinu · October 18, 2012, 4:44pm

Have tried it in my script but is not printing anything. It works on the command line though.

I came up with

if [[ "$1" =~ ^[\\]argv* ]]; then
   msg=`echo "$1" | awk 'BEGIN {FS="argv"} {print $2}' | sed 's/^ *//g'`     
   # Removes the "\argv" and any leading spaces     
   echo "$msg"   
fi

alister · October 18, 2012, 5:20pm

kristinu:

if [[ "$1" =~ ^[\\]argv* ]]; then
   msg=`echo "$1" | awk 'BEGIN {FS="argv"} {print $2}' | sed 's/^ *//g'`     
   # Removes the "\argv" and any leading spaces     
   echo "$msg"   
fi

Or, in bash and ksh (and perhaps others) ...

msg=${1/#\\argv*( )}

Depending on how your bash is configured, you may need to enable extended globbing:

shopt -s extglob

Regards,
Alister