How to preserve double quotes in $@ in a shell script?

Question

Let\'s say I have a really simple shell script \'foo\':

  #!/bin/sh
  echo $@

If I invoke it like so:

  foo 1 2 3
         


        

Answer 1

First, you probably want quoted version of $@, i.e. "$@". To feel the difference, try putting more than one space inside the string.

Second, quotes are element of shell's syntax -- it doesn't do you a favor. To preserve them, you need to escape them. Examples:

foo 1 "\"this arg has whitespace\"" 3

foo 1 '"this arg has whitespace"' 3