How to write a script to accept any number of command line arguments? (UNIX, BASH)

I have a script that I want to accept any number of command line arguments.

So far I have

if [ -O $1 ] ; then echo "you are the owner of $1"
else echo "you are not the owner of $1"
fi

Obviously if I wanted the script to only accept one argument this would work but what would work for ANY number of arguments.

ex. ./script f f1 f2 f3

1

3 Answers

One possible way to do what you want involves $@, which is an array of all the arguments passed in.

for item in "$@"; do if [ -O "$item" ]; then echo "you are the owner of $item" else echo "you are not the owner of $item" fi
done

2

Well, it depends on exactly what you want to do, but look into $*, $@, and shift.

"$@" does not solve his problem of "ANY number of arguments". there is a limit in how long a commandline can be (). a better way to read in "unlimited arguments" is via STDIN:

prg_which_creates_arguments | while read a; do \ echo "do something with $a"; \
done

just create the arguments and pipe them one after another at the code which is doing something with them.

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