Bash – Quotes Stripped When Command Passed as Argument

bashlinuxscriptingshell

I am trying to implement a dry run kind of mechanism for my script and facing the issue of quotes getting stripped off when a command is passed as an argument to a function and resulting in unexpected behavior.

dry_run () {
    echo "$@"
    #printf '%q ' "$@"

    if [ "$DRY_RUN" ]; then
        return 0
    fi

    "$@"
}


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 is:

su - webuser1 -c cd /home/webuser1/public_html && git log -1 -p|mail -s 'Git deployment on webuser1' user@domain.com

Expected:

su - webuser1 -c "cd /home/webuser1/public_html && git log -1 -p|mail -s 'Git deployment on webuser1' user@domain.com"

With printf enabled instead of echo:

su - webuser1 -c cd\ /home/webuser1/public_html\ \&\&\ git\ log\ -1\ -p\|mail\ -s\ \'Git\ deployment\ on\ webuser1\'\ user@domain.com

Result:

su: invalid option -- 1

That shouldn't be the case if quotes remained where they were inserted. I have also tried using "eval", not much difference. If i remove the dry_run call in email_admin and then run script, it work great.

Best Answer

Try using \" instead of just ".

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