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I'm looking for a way to pass an arbitrary sequence of numbers to a bash script. I know about seq. However, the key word here is arbitrary. For example:

$ ./do_foo 2,4,5

Should perform something like this:

#!/bin/bash
for i in {2,4,5}; do
    foo $i
done

And, of course:

$ ./do_foo 2..5

Should also be possible and perform something like this:

#!/bin/bash
for i in {2..5}; do
    foo $i
done
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2
  • 1
    Why don't you pipe the sequence (generated by seq or whatever other program) in to the script (seq 2 5 | your_script` ? Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:15
  • @Anthon That's more or less what I do today (run the loop outside the script), but wanted to see if something a bit more elegant and less verbose was possible. Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:35

1 Answer 1

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1

Just pass them as parameters:

#! /bin/sh
for i in "$@"; do
    foo "$i"
done

Then:

./do_foo 2 4 5
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5
  • This covers only part of the problem. You can't do 2..5 this way. Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:27
  • Sure you can: ./do_foo {2..5}. Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:30
  • Oh, I haven't tried it that way! Doh! Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:31
  • @kos My actual script is a lot more complicated, of course, so I have a few shifts while loading other parameters and then treat the remainder $@ as the sequence. Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:37
  • @kos Yes, I kinda agree with you. But you can do do_foo {2,4,5} as well, which I prefer because it makes usage more consistent. Commented May 7, 2015 at 18:48

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