How do I pass an array as a variable from a first bash shell script to a second script.
first.sh#!/bin/bash
AR=('foo' 'bar' 'baz' 'bat')
sh second.sh "$AR" # foo
sh second.sh "${AR[@]}" # foo
#!/bin/bash
ARR=$1
echo ${ARR[@]}
In both cases, the result is foo. But the result I want is foo bar baz bat.
What am I doing wrong and how do I fix it?
Use
sh second.sh "${AR[@]}"
which split the array elements in different arguments, i.e
sh second.sh "${A[0]}" "${A[1]}" "${A[2]}" ...
and in second.sh use
ARR=("$@")
to collect the command line arguments into an array.
PATH, EDITOR, SHELL, ...) and internal shell variables (BASH_VERSION, RANDOM, ...) are fully capitalized. All other variable names should be lowercase. Since variable names are case-sensitive, this convention avoids accidentally overriding environmental and internal variables.Try changing ARR=$1 in second.sh with ARR=("$@").
$1 assumes a single variable but you need to serialize all array items.
