How to get exact command line string from shell?

arguments, parsing, shell

Solution

In `bash`, you can get this from the shell history:

set -o history
shopt -s expand_aliases

function myhack {
  line=$(history 1)
  line=${line#*[0-9]  }
  echo "You wrote: $line"
}
alias myhack='myhack #'

Which works as you describe:

$ myhack --args="stuff" * {1..10}    $PATH
You wrote: myhack --args="stuff" * {1..10}    $PATH

Also, here's a handy diagram:

Problem

I know about `$*`, `$@`, `"$@"` and even `${1+"@"}` and what they mean. I need to get access to the EXACT command-line arguments string from a shell script. Please pay attention to the quotes in the example. Anything like "$@" saves parameters but removes quotes and I don't see how to recover from this. Example: ./my-shell.sh "1 2" 3 And I need to retrieve the EXACT parameter string without any processing: "1 2" 3 Any idea how to achieve this?

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