Store literal wildcard character in bash string

Question

Say I have a function

print_args () {
    for i in $@; do
        echo "$i"
    done
}

When I do

foo='\*'
print_args $foo

I get

\*

(with the backslash) as output.

If I change the definition of foo to foo='*' instead, I get all the files in the current directory when running print_args $foo.

So I either get the backslash included, or the * interpreted, but I don't see how to get the * literally.

The output is the same whether I include double quotes around $foo or not.

Answer 1

The general rule is to quote all variables. It prevents shell expansion and splitting on spaces. So your function should look like this (quoting $@, as well as ${array[@]} splits by arguments):

print_args () {
    for i in "$@"; do
        echo "$i"
    done
}

And call it like this:

print_args "$foo"