up vote 5 down vote favorite
2

I have a bash script that is being used in a CGI. The CGI sets the $QUERY_STRING environment variable by reading everything after the ? in the URL. For example, http://example.com?a=123&b=456&c=ok sets QUERY_STRING=a=123&b=456&c=ok.

Somewhere I found the following ugliness:

b=$(echo "$QUERY_STRING" | sed -n 's/^.*b=\([^&]*\).*$/\1/p' | sed "s/%20/ /g")

which will set $b to whatever was found in $QUERY_STRING for b. However, my script has grown to have over ten input parameters. Is there an easier way to automatically convert the parameters in $QUERY_STRING into environment variables usable by bash?

Maybe I'll just use a for loop of some sort, but it'd be even better if the script was smart enough to automatically detect each parameter and maybe build an array that looks something like this:

${parm[a]}=123
${parm[b]}=456
${parm[c]}=ok

How could I write code to do that?

share|improve this question
I just noticed that I'm actually stuck on Bash 3. Does anyone have a simple, secure solution that will not involve associative arrays? – User1 Oct 13 '10 at 16:30
1  
See my edited answer for an alternative to associative arrays (also be sure to read the page I linked to ( BashFAQ/006 ). – Dennis Williamson Oct 19 '10 at 1:32

2 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

Try this:

saveIFS=$IFS
IFS='=&'
parm=($QUERY_STRING)
IFS=$saveIFS

Now you have this:

parm[0]=a
parm[1]=123
parm[2]=b
parm[3]=456
parm[4]=c
parm[5]=ok

In Bash 4, which has associative arrays, you can do this (using the array created above):

declare -A array
for ((i=0; i<${#parm[@]}; i+=2))
do
    array[${parm[i]}]=${parm[i+1]}
done

which will give you this:

array[a]=123
array[b]=456
array[c]=ok

Edit:

To use indirection in Bash 2 and later (using the parm array created above): 

for ((i=0; i<${#parm[@]}; i+=2))
do
    declare var_${parm[i]}=${parm[i+1]}
done

Then you will have:

var_a=123
var_b=456
var_c=ok

You can access these directly:

echo $var_a

or indirectly:

for p in a b c
do
    name="var$p"
    echo ${!name}
done

If possible, it's better to avoid indirection since it can make code messy and be a source of bugs.

share|improve this answer
+1 for the parm array generation. But all methods presented to loop that array fail to properly handle repeated keys. Each occurrence will overwrite the previous. For example, a=1&a=2&a=x would result in parm[a]=x – MestreLion Aug 9 '11 at 20:44
@MestreLion: You can add logic to deal with the possibility of repeated keys, but you would need to decide how you want to deal with them. You could do first-precedent or last-precedent or some method of accumulation. – Dennis Williamson Aug 11 '11 at 22:14
up vote 8 down vote

you can break $QUERY down using IFS. For example, setting it to &

$ QUERY="a=123&b=456&c=ok"
$ echo $QUERY
a=123&b=456&c=ok
$ IFS="&"
$ set -- $QUERY
$ echo $1
a=123
$ echo $2
b=456
$ echo $3
c=ok

$ array=($@)

$ for i in "${array[@]}"; do IFS="=" ; set -- $i; echo $1 $2; done
a 123
b 456
c ok

And you can save to a hash/dictionary in Bash 4+

$ declare -A hash
$ for i in "${array[@]}"; do IFS="=" ; set -- $i; hash[$1]=$2; done
$ echo ${hash["b"]}
456
share|improve this answer
+1 for the set -- $var trick.. very neat ;) – MestreLion Aug 9 '11 at 20:36

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.