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BTW2, in most situations you don't want the arguments either merged or split, so what you want is "$@". Unlike $*, $@ doesn't merge the arguments, and with double-quotes it doesn't split them either (or expand them as filename wildcards) -- it just passes them straight through. But don't use args="$@", because that actually does merge them like "$*" (or maybe with " " instead of the first char of IFS, depending on the shell) (it has to merge them to save them in a plain variable). Use args=("$@") instead, to save them as an array.

EDIT: See this question for more options & discussion of how to save & restore the value of IFS.

BTW2, in most situations you don't want the arguments either merged or split, so what you want is "$@". Unlike $*, $@ doesn't merge the arguments, and with double-quotes it doesn't split them either (or expand them as filename wildcards) -- it just passes them straight through. But don't use args="$@", because that actually does merge them like "$*" (or maybe with " " instead of the first char of IFS, depending on the shell) (it has to merge them to save them in a plain variable). Use args=("$@") instead, to save them as an array.

BTW2, in most situations you don't want the arguments either merged or split, so what you want is "$@". Unlike $*, $@ doesn't merge the arguments, and with double-quotes it doesn't split them either (or expand them as filename wildcards) -- it just passes them straight through. But don't use args="$@", because that actually does merge them like "$*" (it has to to save them in a plain variable). Use args=("$@") instead, to save them as an array.

BTW2, in most situations you don't want the arguments either merged or split, so what you want is "$@". Unlike $*, $@ doesn't merge the arguments, and with double-quotes it doesn't split them either (or expand them as filename wildcards) -- it just passes them straight through. But don't use args="$@", because that actually does merge them like "$*" (or maybe with " " instead of the first char of IFS, depending on the shell) (it has to merge them to save them in a plain variable). Use args=("$@") instead, to save them as an array.

$ echo "$*"

$ set "foo bar" "baz/quux"
$ echo "$*"
foo bar baz/quux

$ echo "$*"

$ set -- "foo bar" "baz/quux"
$ echo "$*"
foo bar baz/quux