19

I've got four files:

./
./myscript.sh
./arguments.txt
./test.sh

Inside myscript.sh, I have to run the file test.sh, passing to it the arguments contained inside arguments.txt.

myscript.sh is:

arguments=$(cat arguments.txt)
source test.sh $arguments

This works well if arguments.txt contains at most one argument:

firstargument

The substitution is:

++ source test.sh 'firstargument'

But the problem is with two or more arguments. It does this:

++ source test.sh 'firstargument secondargument'

Also, I don't know in advance the number of arguments inside arguments.txt. There can be zero or more.

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4
  • What you are describing is not the default behavior of bash. Are you truly using bash, or some other shell (such as zsh, which will do this)? Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 18:04
  • @Patrick Hi, it is real bash. Btw i've already got the answer thanks anyway! Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 18:17
  • Are you actually writing source test.sh "$arguments" with quotes? That would be one explanation for your description Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 19:55
  • I tried both with and without double quotes. With the bash's substitution i always get the singlequote. So source test.sh "$arguments" and source test.sh $arguments both result in source test.sh 'firstargument secondargument'. Commented Jul 22, 2014 at 7:38

3 Answers 3

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16

Assuming each line of arguments.txt represents a separate argument, with bash 4 you can read arguments.txt into an array using mapfile (each line from the file goes in as an array element, in sequence) and then pass the array to the command

mapfile -t <arguments.txt
source test.sh "${MAPFILE[@]}"

The advantage is that splitting on spaces embedded inside lines is avoided

With lower versions of bash

IFS=$'\n' read -ra arr -d '' <arguments.txt
source test.sh "${arr[@]}"
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1
  • Inside the file arguments.txt the arguments are separeted by space. Btw i tried something very similar using array and a for but didn't worked and don't know why. Well, thanks a lot! Commented Jul 21, 2014 at 18:16
4

I would suggest using a function with a while/do loop to iterate through the argument file.

Just create a file containing the function and then call the test.sh file within the function to iterate through the arguments contained in the arguments.txt file.

#!/bin/sh
# Calling script

function_name ()
  {
    while read line;
    do
      . ~/path_to/test.sh $line
      do_something_commands # print to screen or file or do nothing
    done < ~/path_to_/argument_file.txt
  }

function_name # Call the function
do_something_commands # print to screen or file or do nothing
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1
  • This is the easiest method, not sure why it isn't the top answer. I didn't even make a function. I just did while read line; do xyz; done and then ran the script with bash myscript < arguments.txt and it worked. Commented Mar 10, 2022 at 19:25
3

You can do this with awk. For example:

arguments=`awk '{a = $1 " " a} END {print a}' arguments.txt`

Edit after reading your comment:

arguments=`awk '{i = 0; while(i<=NF){i++; a = a " "$i}} END {print a}'
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