Re: getopt and parameters with spaces

[Frodo Looijaard <frodo@frodo.looijaard.name>]

On Mon, Dec 17, 2007 at 06:29:01PM -0500, T o n g wrote:
 
> I seem to have found a bug of getopt from the util-linux
> package. Please correct me if I'm wrong. 
> 
> I believe that the suggested way to call getopt is 
> 
>  eval set -- `getopt -o <options> -- "$@"`

No, it is actually: 
  eval set -- "`getopt -o <options> -- "$@"`"

Note the extra set of double quotes!

See also the example script (on debian installed in
/usr/share/doc/util-linux/examples/getopt-parse.bash.gz), which does it
in two steps, in order to preserve the return code:

  TEMP=`getopt -o ab:c:: --long a-long,b-long:,c-long:: \
       -n 'example.bash' -- "$@"`

  if [ $? != 0 ] ; then echo "Terminating..." >&2 ; exit 1 ; fi
  
  # Note the quotes around `$TEMP': they are essential!
  eval set -- "$TEMP"

That remark about the quotes is not there by accident :-)

 
> But I found that it can't handle parameters with spaces well:
> 
>  $ set -- -t 'test p  1' 2

[..]
 
>  $ eval set -- `getopt -o t: -- "$@"`
> 
>  $ echo "'$2'"
>  'test p 1'

Correct. But with the extra double quotes around the backquotes, it
preserves the spaces correctly.

Have fun,
  Frodo

-- 
Frodo Looijaard <frodo@frodo.looijaard.name> (See http://frodo.looijaard.name/)
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