bash: list vars and function

CarLost · 02-20-2009, 12:54 PM

Hi everyone!!!

Sorry for the noob question but.. I'm stuck with this.

I'm trying to pass a list of IPs address into a function, but I can't pass trough.

Code:

IPs= 192.168.x.x 192.168.x.y etc etc

tEST()
{
for ip in $1
echo $ip
}
tEST $IPs

It just print the first one not more.

I don't know how to pass the entire list to the function...

HELP

thanks

PS: The IPs list is get by working on a file..

Code:

IPs= $(awk -F \; '{print $7}' $list | sed s/,/./g | sed 1d | sed 's/.$//' )

colucix · 02-20-2009, 12:59 PM

Apart the missing do/done statements in the for loop, you loop over $1 which is the first argument. Try to loop over all the arguments passed to the tEST function as in

Code:

for ip in "$@"
do
  echo $ip
done

Also in a variable assigment you cannot put spaces immediately after the equal sign:

Code:

IPs=$(awk blah blah blah)

CarLost · 02-20-2009, 01:08 PM

Thanks a lot....

About the do and done, sorry just write to fast to remember transcribe this....

And the space..... the same

The fact is I miss the "$@" thing... I'm fully grateful

Thanks a lot.... This is what I miss

Bye

catkin · 02-21-2009, 01:02 PM

Hello CarLost

It's not just that you can't put whitespace (tabs, spaces and newlines) after an assigmnent =, you can only put a single "word".

Example:
x=1 2 3 4
This means "assign 1 to variable x then run command 2 with arguments 3 and 4. Weird, huh? Why did they design the shell to work like that?

If you do want to assign a value that includes whitespace to a variable you need to quote it;
x='1 2 3 4'

This is powerful; for example it allows you to assign carriage return to a variable, like this
x='
'

BTW, if you want to see what's in a variable it's helpful to use something like this
echo "'$x'"

Putting it in " quotes allows the shell to "expand" $x, replacing it with its value. Try
echo '$x'

Putting ' quotes inside the " quotes lets you see any whitespace at the beginning and especially end of the value. Try
x=' 1234 '
echo $x
echo "$x"
echo "'$x'"

Best

Charles