Commit multiple files, with or without spaces in the file names

Question

I have this function:

git_commit () {
    if [[ $# -eq 0 || ( $# -eq 1 && $1 == '.' ) ]]
    then
        git commit .
    else
        commit_string=''
        for var in "$@"
        do
      ! [[ $var =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]] && { echo "Supply integer values from the menu only. Nothing added." && return; }
      file="$(git status -s|awk 'FNR == '$var'{$1="";print $0}')";
      file=$(sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//' <<<"$file")
      new_file="${file} "
      commit_string+=${new_file}

        done
    echo $commit_string;
        read -ep "Commit description: " desc
    commit_string=${commit_string##*( )}
    commit_string="${commit_string//\"}"
    git commit -m "$desc" ${commit_string}
    fi
  git_short_status

}

The function generates a string comprised of filenames that I select with a menu. Example:

get_commit 1 3 5

In this case, it would run:

git commit -m 'description from prompt' file_1 file file_3 file_5

I'm having a tough time figuring out how to get the function to handle files with spaces in them. The problem is in this line:

git commit -m "$desc" ${commit_string}

This line works fine for multiple files with no spaces. However, it chokes on a single file with spaces in it. So I changed it to:

git commit -m "$desc" "${commit_string}"

Like this, it works for files with spaces in it but chokes when I have multiple files (I get an error that it doesn't recognize the file path.

Gordon Davisson · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-29 04:13:56Z

Embedding escapes, quotes, etc in variables doesn't work right, because the shell parses escapes etc before it expands variables; as a result, by the time the escape/whatever is part of the command, it's too late for it to do anything useful.

If you need to store multiple items (e.g. filenames) in a variable, the better way to do it is to use an array, store each item as a separate array element, and then expand the array with the syntax "${arrayname[@]}".

I'm not sure how git status -s reports files with spaces, but I think this should work:

git_commit () {
    if [[ $# -eq 0 || ( $# -eq 1 && $1 == '.' ) ]]
    then
        git commit .
    else
        commit_array=()    # This creates an empty (zero-element) array
        for var in "$@"
        do
      ! [[ $var =~ ^[0-9]+$ ]] && { echo "Supply integer values from the menu only. Nothing added."; return; }
      file="$(git status -s|awk -v var="$var" 'FNR == var {$1="";print $0}')";
      file=$(sed -e 's/^[[:space:]]*//' <<<"$file")
      commit_array+=("${file}")    # Add a new element. The +=, (), and double-quotes are required for this to work right.

        done
    printf "%q " "${commit_array[@]}"    # Print the elements in "quoted" form
    echo    # The printf doesn't print a newline; so do that
        read -ep "Commit description: " desc
    git commit -m "$desc" "${commit_array[@]}"
    fi
  git_short_status

}

I also changed the && to ; in the error return, since if the echo somehow manages to fail, you still want to return rather than continuing. Also, I changed the way $var is passed to awk to a safer form (although in this case it doesn't really matter). (Actually, the whole awk ... sed bit could be cleaned up a bit, but I'll leave it...)

John Kugelman · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-29 04:23:58Z

0

This solved the problem:

bash -c "git commit -m \"$desc\" ${commit_string}"

Though I'm not quite sure why.

edited Jul 29, 2020 at 4:23

John Kugelman

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answered Jul 29, 2020 at 1:56

StevieD

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