how to keep nested BASH parameter untokenized

Question

Consider this trite BASH script:

g1="f 2.txt"

g2="f1.txt $g1"

cp $g2

It fails because I passed three parameters to the

cp

command. How do I escape the

$g1

call to make it pass just two on the final line (er, make it work without passing two variables on line three)? I tried putting quotes around it with no success; it then proceeds to pass the quotes as part of the parameter, which is doubly weird.

In my real scenario I have some optional parameters that themselves take parameters. I had wanted to parse them all out at the top of the script and leave their final parsed values blank if they weren't passed in.

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Answer 1

You can do it using shell arrays:

g1="f 2.txt"
g2=("f1.txt" "$g1")

cp "${g2[@]}"

how to keep nested BASH parameter untokenized

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