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From: rhartman@thestepchild.sgi.com (Robert Hartman)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Positional parameters beyond $9
Message-ID: <1991Apr17.000302.11491@odin.corp.sgi.com>
Date: 17 Apr 91 00:03:02 GMT
References: <991@dri500.dri.nl> <1998@quando.quantum.de>
Sender: news@odin.corp.sgi.com (Net News)
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 52

In article <1998@quando.quantum.de> omerzu@quantum.de (Thomas Omerzu) writes:
>
>In article <991@dri500.dri.nl> slootman@dri.nl (Paul Slootman) writes:
>
>[...]
>>not seen before. If a script has more than 9 positional parameters,
>>there seems to be no way to *directly* access the tenth onwards. Try
>[...]
>>other way. Nothing in TFM states anything about problems with more
>>than 9 parameters (unless I've overlooked it...)
>
>Quote from sh(1):
>
>        Parameter Substitution
>          The character $ is used to introduce substitutable
>          parameters.  There are two types of parameters, positional
>          and keyword.  If parameter is a digit, it is a positional
>.                                         ^^^^^
>          parameter.  Positional parameters may be assigned values by
>          set.  Keyword parameters (also known as variables) may be
>          assigned values by writing:
>
>
>digit != number :-)

There isn't any way to do that directly.  However, I've never
encounterd a case where I wanted to get at $10 without also wanting to
(or being willing to) get at $1-$9.  Here's an example of how I get at
each argument in turn:

while [ $# -gt 0 ] ; do
	case $1 in
	-*) options="$options $1" ;;
	*)  files="$files $1" ;;
	esac
	shift
done

I suppose you could combine this with some sort of test to get at $10:

tmp="$@" #capture args list in temp variable
while [ $# -gt 0 ] ; do
	if [ `expr $# - 10` -eq 0 ] ; then arg10="$1" ; fi
	shift
done
set $tmp #restore original args list

Or you could use your favorite counting look and stick a shift command in
there.  But for handling a variable argument list, I like the first option
best.

-r