Processing arguments in a string

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi

The following code works when reading the arguments from the command line but fails when I try to read from a string. So this works

while [ -n "$1" ]; do
  case $1 in
        -dbversion) if [ "`echo $2 | grep -e '^-[a-z]'`" ]; then { echo "ERROR: missing value for '$1' (seen '$2')"; usage; exit 1; } else { shift; INPUT_VERSION=$1;   } fi ;;
        -type) if [ "`echo $2 | grep -e '^-[a-z]'`" ]; then { echo "ERROR: missing value for '$1' (seen '$2')"; usage; exit 1; } else { shift; INPUT_TARGET_TYPE=$1;   } fi ;;
        -host) if [ "`echo $2 | grep -e '^-[a-z]'`" ]; then { echo "ERROR: missing value for '$1' (seen '$2')"; usage; exit 1; } else { shift; INPUT_HOST=$1;   } fi ;;
  *)    echo "ERROR: unknown argument '$1'"; exit 1;;
  esac
  shift
done

but when I replace the line

while [ -n "$1" ]; do

witth

OPTPARMS="-dbversion 11.2.0.4.0 -type backup -host testhost"
 while [ -n $OPTPARMS ]; do

it only sees the "ERROR: unknown argument"

Can somebody please tell me what the problem is?
Many thanks

Please ignore the old code (back ticks, echo etc.).

2

Hi general_franco,

If you want to manually force arguments, you can use :

set -- -dbversion 11.2.0.4.0 -type backup -host testhost
while [ -n "$1" ]; do

Regards
Santiago

1 Like
3

Thanks Santiago. I need to pass in a variable into the while loop. The values in $OPTPARMS will change every run.
So

set -- $OPTPARMS

before the while loop should work, right?

4

If you use OPTPARMS for passing the info, you need to use it in the case statement as well...

5

Will the command

set -- $OPTPARMS

not push the values in $OPTPARMS back onto the input stack?

So the code in the first post will stay the same if I use this cmd before it?

6

Yes, try and report back...

7

yes, that works! :slight_smile:
Thanks