Send string with whitespaces as git commit message using bash

Question

I'm creating a bash script that updates a git branch, everything works fine but now i want to add the option to specify the commit message as a parameter.

I used this command first:

echo "Executing git commit..."
git commit -m "$1"

but when i sent something like this:

$ git.sh "testing commit message"

I get a bunch of errors telling me the command cannot be recognized by git.

I suppose in this case that the double quotes I added are not passing the parameter as a single string but as many, so only the first one is taken by the -m option and git tries to pass the others as commit options.

Is there a better way i can pass a multi word string as git commit message when getting it from the script arguments?

I would really appreciate any suggestion you have.

I think your bug is not in the code you quoted, because double-quotes absolutely should protect the parameter expansion from being treated as multiple words. — Jamey Sharp
– Jamey Sharp, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 0:45
also, debug your setup with an echo xxxx"$1"XXXX before the call to git. Good luck. — shellter
– shellter, Commented Nov 8, 2012 at 2:22

Diego Torres Milano · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-08 05:45:37Z

4

The quotes are removed when the command is evaluated by the shell.

Use something like

git commit -m "'$1'"

answered Nov 8, 2012 at 5:45

Diego Torres Milano

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2 Comments

Dariux Over a year ago

for me this adds single quotes to message, but I solved by adding just spaces around the variable: git commit -m " $msg "

adi518 Over a year ago

If you use this command in an npm script, you can't do it like that. Instead, you have to use double quotes and escape them, like so: "postdeploy": "git add package.json package-lock.json && git commit -m \"Docs %npm_package_version%\""

JMAD2016 · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-09 12:54:55Z

2

This works for me:

git commit -m "$(echo $@)"

answered Mar 9, 2020 at 12:54

JMAD2016

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