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linuxescapingwhitespaceksh

Whitespace as an argument of a ksh script

Suppose you have the following script:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

for element in $@
    do
            echo $element
done

And you execute the script using:

./myscript.ksh "my element"

The expected output should be:

my element

but the whitespace is treated as a separator for each argument, obtaining:

my
element

How should I escape the whitespace?

Thanks

Solution

  • You must either quote the $@, or use nothing:

    for element in "$@"

    or

    for element

    will both work.