Check if any of the parameters to a bash script match a string

I'm trying to write a script where I want to check if any of the parameters passed to a bash script match a string. The way I have it setup right now is

if [ "$3" != "-disCopperBld" -a "$4" != "-disCopperBld" -a "$5" != "-disCopperBld" -a "$6" != "-disCopperBld"]

but there might be a large number of parameters, so I was wondering if there is a better way to do this?

Thanks

EDIT: I tried this chunk of code out, and called the script with the option, -disableVenusBld, but it still prints out "Starting build". Am I doing something wrong? Thanks in advance!

while [ $# -ne 0 ]
do arg="$1" case "$arg" in -disableVenusBld) disableVenusBld=true ;; -disableCopperBld) disableCopperBld=true ;; -disableTest) disableTest=true ;; -disableUpdate) disableUpdate=true ;; *) nothing="true" ;; esac shift
done
if [ "$disableVenusBld" != true ]; then echo "Starting build"
fi

3

5 Answers

It looks like you're doing option handling in a shell script. Here's the idiom for that:

#! /bin/sh -
# idiomatic parameter and option handling in sh
while test $# -gt 0
do case "$1" in --opt1) echo "option 1" ;; --opt2) echo "option 2" ;; --*) echo "bad option $1" ;; *) echo "argument $1" ;; esac shift
done
exit 0

(There are a couple of conventions for indenting the ;;, and some shells allow you to give the options as (--opt1), to help with brace matching, but this is the basic idea)

3

This worked for me. It does exactly what you asked and nothing more (no option processing). Whether that's good or bad is an exercise for the poster :)

if [[ "$*" == *"YOURSTRING"* ]]
then echo "YES"
else echo "NO"
fi

This takes advantage of special handling of $*and bash super-test [[…]] brackets.

8

How about searching (with wildcards) the whole parameter space:

if [[ $@ == *'-disableVenusBld'* ]]
then

Edit: Ok, ok, so that wasn't a popular answer. How about this one, it's perfect!:

if [[ "${@#-disableVenusBld}" = "$@" ]]
then echo "Did not find disableVenusBld"
else echo "Found disableVenusBld"
fi

Edit2: Ok, ok, maybe this isn't perfect... Think it works only if -param is at the start of the list and will also match -paramXZY or -paramABC. I still think the original problem can be solved very nicely with bash string manipulation, but I haven't quite cracked it here... -Can you??

8

disCopperBld=
for x; do if [ "$x" = "-disCopperBld" ]; then disCopperBld=1; break; fi
done
if [ -n "$disCopperBld" ]; then ...
fi

If you need to test only the parameters starting at $3, do the search in a function:

## Usage: search_trailing_parameters NEEDLE NUM "$@"
## Search NEEDLE amongst the parameters, skipping $1 through ${$NUM}.
search_trailing_parameters () { needle=$1 shift $(($2 + 2)) for x; do if [ "$x" = "$needle" ]; then return 0; fi done return 1
}
if search_trailing_parameters -disCopperBld 2 "$@"; then ...
fi

But I wonder why you're trying to do this in the first place, it's not a common need. Usually, you'd process options in order, as in Dennis's answer to your previous question.

[[ "$@" =~ '-disableVenusBld' ]] && disableVenusBld=true
[[ "$@" =~ '-disCopperBld' ]] && disCopperBld=true
[[ "$@" =~ '-disableTest' ]] && disableTest=true
[[ "$@" =~ '-disableUpdate' ]] && disableUpdate=true

or more generally

[[ "$@" =~ 'your-string' ]] && ( doSomething )

0

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