Bash: Quotes getting stripped when a command is passed as argument to a function

"$@" should work. In fact it works for me in this simple test case:

dry_run()
{
    "$@"
}

email_admin()
{
    dry_run su - foo -c "cd /var/tmp && ls -1"
}

email_admin

Output:

./foo.sh 
a
b

Edited to add: the output of echo $@ is correct. The " is a meta-character and not part of the parameter. You can prove that it is correctly working by adding echo $5 to dry_run(). It will output everything after -c

Try using \" instead of just ".

This is not a trivial problem. Shell performs quote removal before calling the function, so there's no way the function can recreate the quotes exactly as you typed them.

However, if you just want to be able to print out a string that can be copied and pasted to repeat the command, there are two different approaches you can take:

• Build a command string to be run via eval and pass that string to dry_run
• Quote the command's special characters in dry_run before printing

Using eval

Here's how you could use eval to print exactly what is run:

dry_run() {
    printf '%s\n' "$1"
    [ -z "${DRY_RUN}" ] || return 0
    eval "$1"
}

email_admin() {
    echo " Emailing admin"
    dry_run 'su - '"$target_username"'  -c "cd '"$GIT_WORK_TREE"' && git log -1 -p|mail -s '"'$mail_subject'"' '"$admin_email"'"'
    echo " Emailed"
}

Output:

su - webuser1  -c "cd /home/webuser1/public_html && git log -1 -p|mail -s 'Git deployment on webuser1' [email protected]"

Note the crazy amount of quoting -- you've got a command within a command within a command, which gets ugly quickly. Beware: The above code will have problems if your variables contain whitespace or special characters (like quotes).

Quoting Special Characters

This approach enables you to write code more naturally, but the output is harder for humans to read because of the quick-and-dirty way shell_quote is implemented:

# This function prints each argument wrapped in single quotes
# (separated by spaces).  Any single quotes embedded in the
# arguments are escaped.
#
shell_quote() {
    # run in a subshell to protect the caller's environment
    (
        sep=''
        for arg in "$@"; do
            sqesc=$(printf '%s\n' "${arg}" | sed -e "s/'/'\\\\''/g")
            printf '%s' "${sep}'${sqesc}'"
            sep=' '
        done
    )
}

dry_run() {
    printf '%s\n' "$(shell_quote "$@")"
    [ -z "${DRY_RUN}" ] || return 0
    "$@"
}

email_admin() {
    echo " Emailing admin"
    dry_run su - "${target_username}"  -c "cd $GIT_WORK_TREE && git log -1 -p|mail -s '$mail_subject' $admin_email"
    echo " Emailed"
}

Output:

'su' '-' 'webuser1' '-c' 'cd /home/webuser1/public_html && git log -1 -p|mail -s '\''Git deployment on webuser1'\'' [email protected]'

You can improve the readability of the output by changing shell_quote to backslash-escape special characters instead of wrapping everything in single quotes, but it's hard to do correctly.

If you do the shell_quote approach, you can construct the command to pass to su in a safer way. The following would work even if ${GIT_WORK_TREE}, ${mail_subject}, or ${admin_email} contained special characters (single quotes, spaces, asterisks, semicolons, etc.):

email_admin() {
    echo " Emailing admin"
    cmd=$(
        shell_quote cd "${GIT_WORK_TREE}"
        printf '%s' ' && git log -1 -p | '
        shell_quote mail -s "${mail_subject}" "${admin_email}"
    )
    dry_run su - "${target_username}"  -c "${cmd}"
    echo " Emailed"
}

Output:

'su' '-' 'webuser1' '-c' ''\''cd'\'' '\''/home/webuser1/public_html'\'' && git log -1 -p | '\''mail'\'' '\''-s'\'' '\''Git deployment on webuser1'\'' '\''[email protected]'\'''

That's tricky, you might try this other approach I've seen:

DRY_RUN=
#DRY_RUN=echo
....
email_admin() {
    echo " Emailing admin"
    $DRY_RUN su - $target_username  -c "cd $GIT_WORK_TREE && git log -1 -p|mail -s '$mail_subject' $admin_email"
    echo " Emailed"
    }

that way you just set DRY_RUN to either blank or "echo" at the top of your script and it either does it or just echoes it.

Nice challenge :) It should be "easy" if you have bash recent enough to support $LINENO and $BASH_SOURCE

Here is my first attempt, hoping it suits your needs:

#!/bin/bash
#adjust the previous line if needed: on prompt, do "type -all bash" to see where it is.    
#we check for the necessary ingredients:
[ "$BASH_SOURCE" = "" ] && { echo "you are running a too ancient bash, or not running bash at all. Can't go further" ; exit 1 ; }
[ "$LINENO" = "" ] && { echo "your bash doesn't support LINENO ..." ; exit 2 ; }
# we passed the tests. 
export _tab_="`printf '\011'`" #portable way to define it. It is used below to ensure we got the correct line, whatever separator (apart from a \CR) are between the arguments

function printandexec {
   [ "$FUNCNAME" = "" ] && { echo "your bash doesn't support FUNCNAME ..." ; exit 3 ; }
   #when we call this, we should do it like so :  printandexec $LINENO / complicated_cmd 'with some' 'complex arguments | and maybe quoted subshells'
   # so : $1 is the line in the $BASH_SOURCE that was calling this function
   #    : $2 is "/" , which we will use for easy cut
   #    : $3-... are the remaining arguments (up to next ; or && or || or | or #. However, we don't care, we use another mechanism...)
   export tmpfile="/tmp/printandexec.$$" #create a "unique" tmp file
   export original_line="$1"
   #1) display & save for execution:
   sed -e "${original_line}q;d" < ${BASH_SOURCE} | grep -- "${FUNCNAME}[ ${_tab_}]*\$LINENO" | cut -d/ -f2- | tee "${tmpfile}"
   #then execute it in the *current* shell so variables, etc are all set correctly:
   source ${tmpfile}
   rm -f "${tmpfile}"; #always have last command in a function finish by ";"

}

echo "we do stuff here:"
printandexec  $LINENO  / ls -al && echo "something else" #and you can even put commentaries!
#printandexec  $LINENO / su - $target_username  -c "cd $GIT_WORK_TREE && git log -1 -p|mail -s '$mail_subject' $admin_email"
#uncommented the previous on your machine once you're confident the script works