Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!att!linac!uwm.edu!wuarchive!uunet!zephyr.ens.tek.com!tektronix!nosun!qiclab!onion!jeff
From: jeff@onion.pdx.com (Jeff Beadles)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Variable substitition
Message-ID: <1990Dec2.054334.10048@onion.pdx.com>
Date: 2 Dec 90 05:43:34 GMT
References: <1990Nov30.092424@cs.utwente.nl>
Lines: 30

In <1990Nov30.092424@cs.utwente.nl> stadt@cs.utwente.nl
  (Richard van de Stadt) writes:
>Is there some sort of variable substitution possible in a shell script
>to get the value of the last argument supplied to the script? I don't
>mean shifting the arguments until one is left. I'd like to know if something 
>like awk's $NF, in which NF means the number of fields, and $NF means the 
>value of the last field, is possible. ${$#} results in an error message.

Well, this will work in the bourne shell:

#!/bin/sh

last="`eval echo \\$$#`"
echo "Last field = $last"
exit 0


And, when run:

% ./t jeff beadles

Last field = beadles


This might not be the most elegant solution, but it does work.  It's even been
somewhat tested, :-)

	-Jeff
-- 
Jeff Beadles		jeff@onion.pdx.com