Working with command-line arguments (special variables, set and shift, getopt)
Command-line arguments are required for the following reasons:
- They inform the utility, or they command which file or group of files to process (reading/writing of files)
- Command-line arguments tell the command/utility which option to use
Check out the following command line:
[student@localhost ~]$ my_program arg1 arg2 arg3
If my_command
is a bash shell script, then we can access every command-line positional parameter inside the script, as follows:
$0 would contain "my_program" # Command
$1 would contain "arg1" # First parameter
$2 would contain "arg2" # Second parameter
$3 would contain "arg3" # Third parameter
The following is a summary of the positional parameters:
| Shell-script name or command |
| Positional parameters |
| Positional parameter |
| Total number of parameters |
| Evaluates for all the positional parameters |
| Same as |