How to pass argument with spaces to a shell script function? [duplicate]

Question

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I'm trying to pass multiple argument to a function, but one of them is consist of two words and I want shell function to deal with it as one arg:

args=("$@")
function(){
 echo ${args[0]}
 echo ${args[1]}
 echo ${args[2]}
}

when I call this command sh shell hi hello guys bye

I get this

hi

hello

guys

But what I really want is:

hi 
hello guys
bye

You shouldn't use function as a name of a function. It's a keyword in ksh, and some bourne-shell like bash, zsh, dash. — cuonglm, Aug 23 '14 at 18:31
@Gnouc. Not in dash. In yash yes. Though zsh also accepts ksh's function definition syntax, function() echo x; function will work in zsh. So the only shells where that is a problem are ksh, bash and yash. — Stéphane Chazelas, Aug 23 '14 at 20:05
@StéphaneChazelas: Oh, I retry and it works in zsh, but dash doesn't. — cuonglm, Aug 23 '14 at 20:13

sillyMunky · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-23 18:28:48Z

up vote 3 down vote accepted

You should just quote the second argument.

myfunc(){
        echo "$1"
        echo "$2"
        echo "$3"
}

myfunc hi "hello guys" bye

answered Aug 23 '14 at 18:28

sillyMunky
1564

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richard · Answer 2 · 2014-08-23 18:22:40Z

up vote 4 down vote

If called from any Unix shell, then you need to quote it.

sh shell hi "hello guys" bye

There is no way to do it in the script, at there is no way for the script to know which spaces are which (which words are together).

answered Aug 23 '14 at 18:22

richard
3,934826

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marked as duplicate by Gilles Aug 24 '14 at 23:38