How to pass quoted arguments but with blank spaces in linux - linux

Question

I have a file with these arguments and their values ​​this way
# parameters.txt
VAR1 001
VAR2 aaa
VAR3 'Hello World'
and another file to configure like this
# example.conf
VAR1 = 020
VAR2 = kab
VAR3 = ''
when I want to get the values in a function I use this command
while read p; do
VALUE=$(echo $p | awk '{print $2}')
done < parameters.txt
the firsts arguments throw the right values, but the last one just gets the 'Hello for the blank space, my question is how do I get the entire 'Hello World' value?

Answer 1

If you can use bash, there is no need to use awk: read and shell parameter expansion can be combined to solve your problem:
while read -r name rest; do
# Drop the '= ' part, if present.
[[ $rest == '= '* ]] && value=${rest:2} || value=$rest
# $value now contains the line's value,
# but *including* any enclosing ' chars, if any.
# Assuming that there are no *embedded* ' chars., you can remove them
# as follows:
value=${value//\'/}
done < parameters.txt
read by default also breaks a line into fields by whitespace, like awk, but unlike awk it has the ability to assign the remainder of the line to a varaible, namely the last one, if fewer variables than fields found are specified;
read's -r option is generally worth specifying to avoid unexpected interpretation of \ chars. in the input.
As for your solution attempt:
awk doesn't know about quoting in input - by default it breaks input into fields by whitespace, irrespective of quotation marks.
Thus, a string such as 'Hello World' is simply broken into fields 'Hello and World'.
However, in your case you can split each input line into its key and value using a carefully crafted FS value (FS is the input field separator, which can be also be set via option -F; the command again assumes bash, this time for use of <(...), a so-called process substitution, and $'...', an ANSI C-quoted string):
while IFS= read -r value; do
# Work with $value...
done < <(awk -F$'^[[:alnum:]]+ (= )?\'?|\'' '{ print $2 }' parameters.txt)
Again the assumption is that values contain no embedded ' instances.
Field separator regex $'^[[:alnum:]]+ (= )?\'?|\'' splits each line so that $2, the 2nd field, contains the value, stripped of enclosing ' chars., if any.
xargs is the rare exception among the standard utilities in that it does understand single- and double-quoted strings (yet also without support for embedded quotes).
Thus, you could take advantage of xargs' ability to implicitly strip enclosing quotes when it passes arguments to the specified command, which defaults to echo (again assumes bash):
while read -r name rest; do
# Drop the '= ' part, if present.
[[ $rest == '= '* ]] && value=${rest:2} || value=$rest
# $value now contains the line's value, strippe of any enclosing
# single quotes by `xargs`.
done < <(xargs -L1 < parameters.txt)
xargs -L1 process one (1) line (-L) at a time and implicitly invokes echo with all tokens found on each line, with any enclosing quotes removed from the individual tokens.

Answer 2

The default field separator in awk is the space. So you are only printing the first word in the string passed to awk.
You can specify the field separator on the command line with -F[field separator]
Example, setting the field separator to a comma:
$ echo "Hello World" | awk -F, '{print $1}'
Hello World