Passing Arguments Or Parameters to Functions Using Linux Bash Script

In certain situations, wemayneed to pass arguments or parameters to functions. In such situations, we canpassarguments as follows.

Calling the script with command-line parameters is as follows:

$ name arg1 arg2 arg3 . . .

Let’s type a function as follows:

$  hello() { echo "Hello $1, let us be a friend."; }

Call the function in the command line as follows:

$ hello Ganesh

This should produce the following output:

Output:

Hello Ganesh, let us be a friend

Let’s write the script function_07.sh. In this script, we pass command-line parameters to the script as well as the function:

function_07.sh

#!/bin/bash 
quit() 
{ 
         exit 
} 
ex() 
{ 
    echo $1 $2 $3 
} 
ex Hello hai bye     # Function ex with three arguments 
ex World             # Function ex with one argument 
echo $1        # First argument passed to script 
echo $2        # Second argument passed to script 
echo $3        # Third argument passed to script 
quit 
echo foo 

Test the script as follows:

$ chmod +x function_07.sh
$ ./function_07.sh One Two Three

This should produce the following output:

Output:

Hello hi byeWorldOneTwoThree

We can observe from the output that the parameters passed to the function are local to the function. In global scope, the command-line parameters to the script are available as$1,$2,$3, and more.

Another example script, calledfunction_08.sh, to pass multiple arguments to the function is as follows:

function_08.sh

#! /bin/bash 
folder=~/Desktop/abc 
cdate=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M") 
inotifywait -m -q -e create -r --format '%:e %w%f' $folder | while read file 
do 
	mv ~/Desktop/abc/output.txt ~/Desktop/Old_abc/${cdate}-output.txt 
done

Test the script as follows:

$ chmod +x function_08.sh
$ ./function_08.sh

This should produce the following output:

Output:

Calling countries() for first timecountries(): $0 = ./hello.shcountries(): $1 = USAcountries(): total number of args passed = 1countries(): all arguments ($*) passed = -"USA"Calling countries() second timecountries(): $0 = ./hello.shcountries(): $1 = USAcountries(): total number of args passed = 3countries(): all arguments ($*) passed = -"USA India Japan"

We can create a function that could create a new directory and change to it during the execution of the program. The script function_09.sh is as follows:

function_09.sh

#!/bin/bash 
# mcd: mkdir + cd; creates a new directory and 
# changes into that new directory 
mcd () 
{ 
   mkdir $1 
   cd $1 
} 
mcd test1 

The preceding script will create thetest1folder in the current folder and change the path to thetest1folder.

A common task in many scripts is to ask users to input an answer as eitherYesorNo. In such situations, the following script,function_10.shwould be very useful:

function_10.sh

#!/bin/bash 
yesno ( ) 
{ 
   while  true 
   do 
   echo "$*" 
   echo "Please answer by entering yes or no : " 
   read reply 
   case $reply in 
         yes) 
               echo "You answered Yes" 
               return 0 
               ;; 
         no) 
               echo "You answered No" 
               return 1 
               ;; 
         * ) 
               echo "Invalid input" 
               ;; 
               esac 
               done 
         } 
yesno 

Test the script as follows:

$ chmod +x function_10.sh
$ ./function_10.sh

This should produce the following output:

Output:

Please answer by entering yes or no:yes"You answered Yes"$ ./function_10.shPlease answer by entering yes or no:no"You answered No"