arraysbasharguments

How to pass an array argument to the Bash script

It is surprising me that I do not find the answer after 1 hour search for this. I would like to pass an array to my script like this:

test.sh argument1 array argument2

I DO NOT want to put this in another bash script like following:

array=(a b c)
for i in "${array[@]}"
do
  test.sh argument1 $i argument2
done
Solution

  • Bash arrays are not "first class values" -- you can't pass them around like one "thing".

    Assuming test.sh is a bash script, I would do

    #!/bin/bash
arg1=$1; shift
array=( "$@" )
last_idx=$(( ${#array[@]} - 1 ))
arg2=${array[$last_idx]}
unset array[$last_idx]

echo "arg1=$arg1"
echo "arg2=$arg2"
echo "array contains:"
printf "%s\n" "${array[@]}"

    And invoke it like

    test.sh argument1 "${array[@]}" argument2