I know that any variable set at the end of a pipeline is lost (excluding with the shell option in Bash 4 - unfortunately this needs to be a portable solution). However, I am sure there must be a way with file descriptors or something to stream the output of the end of a pipeline into a variable, even if via some convoluted route! :)
Ideally I want a command/function that takes one argument, the name of a variable that will eventually result in containing the output of the rest of the pipeline.
I have got a function that will find its next free file descriptor in a portable fashion:
getFd ()
{
# we'll start with 3 since 0..2 are mapped to standard in, out, and error respectively
local myFD='3'
# we'll get the upperbound from bash's ulimit
local FD_MAX=$( ulimit -n )
local FD_LOC
if [ -e /proc/$$/fd ]
then
FD_LOC="/proc/$$/fd"
elif [ -e /dev/fd ]
then
FD_LOC="/dev/fd"
else
return 1
fi
while [ -e "${FD_LOC}/${myFD}" ] && [ "${myFD}" -le "${FD_MAX}" ]
do
((++myFD))
done
eval FD="${myFD}"
}
I am thinking I might need to do something like previously creating a pool of open file descriptors that can be pulled in via some alias jiggery pokey or something, but am hoping that I am missing some much simpler way as am sure there must be a better way.
I was also thinking that if I added printf %s "${myFD}" at the end I could do something like alias '{FD}'="$( getFd )" to implement the Bash 4 feature of automatically finding the next available file descriptor for use in the form of {FD} <filename note: the need to have a space, but if this can be made to work it would be great to bring this feature to bash 3.0 for example. Also, would probably have to use shopt -s expand_aliases.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!
P.S. I am trying to avoid having to force the MyCommand MyVariable < <( command1 | command2 ; ) ; type syntax and and am striving if it is possible to end with the: $ command1 | command2 | MyCommand MyVariable ; type of use.
Your question is a bit confusing, but I guess you want to set a user-defined variable name to the 1st available file descriptor.
If that's the case, your function should simply echo the fd number:
getFD() {
...
echo $myFD
}
And then let's say foo contains the variable name to store the fd into, let's assume it contains the string bar:
eval $foo=`getFD`
After that variable bar will contain the first available fd.
Related
This question already has answers here:
Read user input inside a loop
(6 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
First post here! I really need help on this one, I looked the issue on google, but can't manage to find an useful answer for me. So here's the problem.
I'm having fun coding some like of a framework in bash. Everyone can create their own module and add it to the framework. BUT. To know what arguments the script require, I created an "args.conf" file that must be in every module, that kinda looks like this:
LHOST;true;The IP the remote payload will connect to.
LPORT;true;The port the remote payload will connect to.
The first column is the argument name, the second defines if it's required or not, the third is the description. Anyway, long story short, the framework is supposed to read the args.conf file line by line to ask the user a value for every argument. Here's the piece of code:
info "Reading module $name argument list..."
while read line; do
echo $line > line.tmp
arg=`cut -d ";" -f 1 line.tmp`
requ=`cut -d ";" -f 2 line.tmp`
if [ $requ = "true" ]; then
echo "[This argument is required]"
else
echo "[This argument isn't required, leave a blank space if you don't wan't to use it]"
fi
read -p " $arg=" answer
echo $answer >> arglist.tmp
done < modules/$name/args.conf
tr '\n' ' ' < arglist.tmp > argline.tmp
argline=`cat argline.tmp`
info "Launching module $name..."
cd modules/$name
$interpreter $file $argline
cd ../..
rm arglist.tmp
rm argline.tmp
rm line.tmp
succes "Module $name execution completed."
As you can see, it's supposed to ask the user a value for every argument... But:
1) The read command seems to not be executing. It just skips it, and the argument has no value
2) Despite the fact that the args.conf file contains 3 lines, the loops seems to be executing just a single time. All I see on the screen is "[This argument is required]" just one time, and the module justs launch (and crashes because it has not the required arguments...).
Really don't know what to do, here... I hope someone here have an answer ^^'.
Thanks in advance!
(and sorry for eventual mistakes, I'm french)
Alpha.
As #that other guy pointed out in a comment, the problem is that all of the read commands in the loop are reading from the args.conf file, not the user. The way I'd handle this is by redirecting the conf file over a different file descriptor than stdin (fd #0); I like to use fd #3 for this:
while read -u3 line; do
...
done 3< modules/$name/args.conf
(Note: if your shell's read command doesn't understand the -u option, use read line <&3 instead.)
There are a number of other things in this script I'd recommend against:
Variable references without double-quotes around them, e.g. echo $line instead of echo "$line", and < modules/$name/args.conf instead of < "modules/$name/args.conf". Unquoted variable references get split into words (if they contain whitespace) and any wildcards that happen to match filenames will get replaced by a list of matching files. This can cause really weird and intermittent bugs. Unfortunately, your use of $argline depends on word splitting to separate multiple arguments; if you're using bash (not a generic POSIX shell) you can use arrays instead; I'll get to that.
You're using relative file paths everywhere, and cding in the script. This tends to be fragile and confusing, since file paths are different at different places in the script, and any relative paths passed in by the user will become invalid the first time the script cds somewhere else. Worse, you aren't checking for errors when you cd, so if any cd fails for any reason, then entire rest of the script will run in the wrong place and fail bizarrely. You'd be far better off figuring out where your system's root directory is (as an absolute path), then referencing everything from it (e.g. < "$module_root/modules/$name/args.conf").
Actually, you're not checking for errors anywhere. It's generally a good idea, when writing any sort of program, to try to think of what can go wrong and how your program should respond (and also to expect that things you didn't think of will also go wrong). Some people like to use set -e to make their scripts exit if any simple command fails, but this doesn't always do what you'd expect. I prefer to explicitly test the exit status of the commands in my script, with something like:
command1 || {
echo 'command1 failed!' >&2
exit 1
}
if command2; then
echo 'command2 succeeded!' >&2
else
echo 'command2 failed!' >&2
exit 1
fi
You're creating temp files in the current directory, which risks random conflicts (with other runs of the script at the same time, any files that happen to have names you're using, etc). It's better to create a temp directory at the beginning, then store everything in it (again, by absolute path):
module_tmp="$(mktemp -dt module-system)" || {
echo "Error creating temp directory" >&2
exit 1
}
...
echo "$answer" >> "$module_tmp/arglist.tmp"
(BTW, note that I'm using $() instead of backticks. They're easier to read, and don't have some subtle syntactic oddities that backticks have. I recommend switching.)
Speaking of which, you're overusing temp files; a lot of what you're doing with can be done just fine with shell variables and built-in shell features. For example, rather than reading line from the config file, then storing them in a temp file and using cut to split them into fields, you can simply echo to cut:
arg="$(echo "$line" | cut -d ";" -f 1)"
...or better yet, use read's built-in ability to split fields based on whatever IFS is set to:
while IFS=";" read -u3 arg requ description; do
(Note that since the assignment to IFS is a prefix to the read command, it only affects that one command; changing IFS globally can have weird effects, and should be avoided whenever possible.)
Similarly, storing the argument list in a file, converting newlines to spaces into another file, then reading that file... you can skip any or all of these steps. If you're using bash, store the arg list in an array:
arglist=()
while ...
arglist+=("$answer") # or ("#arg=$answer")? Not sure of your syntax.
done ...
"$module_root/modules/$name/$interpreter" "$file" "${arglist[#]}"
(That messy syntax, with the double-quotes, curly braces, square brackets, and at-sign, is the generally correct way to expand an array in bash).
If you can't count on bash extensions like arrays, you can at least do it the old messy way with a plain variable:
arglist=""
while ...
arglist="$arglist $answer" # or "$arglist $arg=$answer"? Not sure of your syntax.
done ...
"$module_root/modules/$name/$interpreter" "$file" $arglist
... but this runs the risk of arguments being word-split and/or expanded to lists of files.
I am using a bash script to execute a program. The program must take the following argument. (The program is gnuplot.)
gnuplot -e "filename='output_0.csv'" 'plot.p'
I need to be able to assemble the following string: "filename='output_0.csv'"
My plan is to assemble the string STRING=filename='output_0.csv' and then do the following: gnuplot -r "$STRING" 'plot.p'. Note I left the words STRING without stackoverflow syntax style highlighting to emphasise the string I want to produce.
I'm not particularly proficient at bash, and so I have no idea how to do this.
I think that strings can be concatenated by using STRING="$STRING"stuff to append to string? I think that may be required?
As an extra layer of complication the value 0 is actually an integer which should increment by 1 each time the program is run. (Done by a for loop.) If I have n=1 in my program, how can I replace the 0 in the string by the "string value" or text version of the integer n?
A safest way to append something to an existing string would be to include squiggly brackets and quotes:
STRING="something"
STRING="${STRING}else"
You can create the "dynamic" portion of your command line with something like this:
somevalue=0
STRING="filename='output_${somevalue}.csv'"
There are other tools like printf which can handle more complex formatting.
somevalue=1
fmt="filename='output_%s.csv'"
STRING="$(printf "$fmt" "$somevalue")"
Regarding your "extra layer of complication", I gather that this increment has to happen in such a way as to store the value somewhere outside the program, or you'd be able to use a for loop to handle things. You can use temporary files for this:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Specify our counter file
counter=/tmp/my_counter
# If it doesn't exist, "prime" it with zero
if [ ! -f "$counter" ]; then
echo "0" > $counter
fi
# And if it STILL doesn't exist, fail.
if [ ! -f "$counter" ]; then
echo "ERROR: can't create counter." >&2
fi
# Read the last value...
read value < "$counter"
# and set up our string, per your question.
STRING="$(printf "filename='output_%d.csv'" "${value}")"
# Last, run your command, and if it succeeds, update the stored counter.
gnuplot -e "$STRING" 'plot.p' && echo "$((value + 1))" > $counter
As always, there's more than one way to solve this problem. With luck, this will give you a head start on your reading of the bash man page and other StackOverflow questions which will help you learn what you need!
An answer was posted, which I thought I had accepted already, but for some reason it has been deleted, possibly because it didn't quite answer the question.
I posted another similar question, and the answer to that helped me also answer this question. You can find said question and answer here: bash: Execute a string as a command
Time and time again, I see Bash answers on Stack Overflow using eval and the answers get bashed, pun intended, for the use of such an "evil" construct. Why is eval so evil?
If eval can't be used safely, what should I use instead?
There's more to this problem than meets the eye. We'll start with the obvious: eval has the potential to execute "dirty" data. Dirty data is any data that has not been rewritten as safe-for-use-in-situation-XYZ; in our case, it's any string that has not been formatted so as to be safe for evaluation.
Sanitizing data appears easy at first glance. Assuming we're throwing around a list of options, bash already provides a great way to sanitize individual elements, and another way to sanitize the entire array as a single string:
function println
{
# Send each element as a separate argument, starting with the second element.
# Arguments to printf:
# 1 -> "$1\n"
# 2 -> "$2"
# 3 -> "$3"
# 4 -> "$4"
# etc.
printf "$1\n" "${#:2}"
}
function error
{
# Send the first element as one argument, and the rest of the elements as a combined argument.
# Arguments to println:
# 1 -> '\e[31mError (%d): %s\e[m'
# 2 -> "$1"
# 3 -> "${*:2}"
println '\e[31mError (%d): %s\e[m' "$1" "${*:2}"
exit "$1"
}
# This...
error 1234 Something went wrong.
# And this...
error 1234 'Something went wrong.'
# Result in the same output (as long as $IFS has not been modified).
Now say we want to add an option to redirect output as an argument to println. We could, of course, just redirect the output of println on each call, but for the sake of example, we're not going to do that. We'll need to use eval, since variables can't be used to redirect output.
function println
{
eval printf "$2\n" "${#:3}" $1
}
function error
{
println '>&2' '\e[31mError (%d): %s\e[m' "$1" "${*:2}"
exit $1
}
error 1234 Something went wrong.
Looks good, right? Problem is, eval parses twice the command line (in any shell). On the first pass of parsing one layer of quoting is removed. With quotes removed, some variable content gets executed.
We can fix this by letting the variable expansion take place within the eval. All we have to do is single-quote everything, leaving the double-quotes where they are. One exception: we have to expand the redirection prior to eval, so that has to stay outside of the quotes:
function println
{
eval 'printf "$2\n" "${#:3}"' $1
}
function error
{
println '&2' '\e[31mError (%d): %s\e[m' "$1" "${*:2}"
exit $1
}
error 1234 Something went wrong.
This should work. It's also safe as long as $1 in println is never dirty.
Now hold on just a moment: I use that same unquoted syntax that we used originally with sudo all of the time! Why does it work there, and not here? Why did we have to single-quote everything? sudo is a bit more modern: it knows to enclose in quotes each argument that it receives, though that is an over-simplification. eval simply concatenates everything.
Unfortunately, there is no drop-in replacement for eval that treats arguments like sudo does, as eval is a shell built-in; this is important, as it takes on the environment and scope of the surrounding code when it executes, rather than creating a new stack and scope like a function does.
eval Alternatives
Specific use cases often have viable alternatives to eval. Here's a handy list. command represents what you would normally send to eval; substitute in whatever you please.
No-op
A simple colon is a no-op in bash:
:
Create a sub-shell
( command ) # Standard notation
Execute output of a command
Never rely on an external command. You should always be in control of the return value. Put these on their own lines:
$(command) # Preferred
`command` # Old: should be avoided, and often considered deprecated
# Nesting:
$(command1 "$(command2)")
`command "\`command\`"` # Careful: \ only escapes $ and \ with old style, and
# special case \` results in nesting.
Redirection based on variable
In calling code, map &3 (or anything higher than &2) to your target:
exec 3<&0 # Redirect from stdin
exec 3>&1 # Redirect to stdout
exec 3>&2 # Redirect to stderr
exec 3> /dev/null # Don't save output anywhere
exec 3> file.txt # Redirect to file
exec 3> "$var" # Redirect to file stored in $var--only works for files!
exec 3<&0 4>&1 # Input and output!
If it were a one-time call, you wouldn't have to redirect the entire shell:
func arg1 arg2 3>&2
Within the function being called, redirect to &3:
command <&3 # Redirect stdin
command >&3 # Redirect stdout
command 2>&3 # Redirect stderr
command &>&3 # Redirect stdout and stderr
command 2>&1 >&3 # idem, but for older bash versions
command >&3 2>&1 # Redirect stdout to &3, and stderr to stdout: order matters
command <&3 >&4 # Input and output!
Variable indirection
Scenario:
VAR='1 2 3'
REF=VAR
Bad:
eval "echo \"\$$REF\""
Why? If REF contains a double quote, this will break and open the code to exploits. It's possible to sanitize REF, but it's a waste of time when you have this:
echo "${!REF}"
That's right, bash has variable indirection built-in as of version 2. It gets a bit trickier than eval if you want to do something more complex:
# Add to scenario:
VAR_2='4 5 6'
# We could use:
local ref="${REF}_2"
echo "${!ref}"
# Versus the bash < 2 method, which might be simpler to those accustomed to eval:
eval "echo \"\$${REF}_2\""
Regardless, the new method is more intuitive, though it might not seem that way to experienced programmed who are used to eval.
Associative arrays
Associative arrays are implemented intrinsically in bash 4. One caveat: they must be created using declare.
declare -A VAR # Local
declare -gA VAR # Global
# Use spaces between parentheses and contents; I've heard reports of subtle bugs
# on some versions when they are omitted having to do with spaces in keys.
declare -A VAR=( ['']='a' [0]='1' ['duck']='quack' )
VAR+=( ['alpha']='beta' [2]=3 ) # Combine arrays
VAR['cow']='moo' # Set a single element
unset VAR['cow'] # Unset a single element
unset VAR # Unset an entire array
unset VAR[#] # Unset an entire array
unset VAR[*] # Unset each element with a key corresponding to a file in the
# current directory; if * doesn't expand, unset the entire array
local KEYS=( "${!VAR[#]}" ) # Get all of the keys in VAR
In older versions of bash, you can use variable indirection:
VAR=( ) # This will store our keys.
# Store a value with a simple key.
# You will need to declare it in a global scope to make it global prior to bash 4.
# In bash 4, use the -g option.
declare "VAR_$key"="$value"
VAR+="$key"
# Or, if your version is lacking +=
VAR=( "$VAR[#]" "$key" )
# Recover a simple value.
local var_key="VAR_$key" # The name of the variable that holds the value
local var_value="${!var_key}" # The actual value--requires bash 2
# For < bash 2, eval is required for this method. Safe as long as $key is not dirty.
local var_value="`eval echo -n \"\$$var_value\""
# If you don't need to enumerate the indices quickly, and you're on bash 2+, this
# can be cut down to one line per operation:
declare "VAR_$key"="$value" # Store
echo "`var_key="VAR_$key" echo -n "${!var_key}"`" # Retrieve
# If you're using more complex values, you'll need to hash your keys:
function mkkey
{
local key="`mkpasswd -5R0 "$1" 00000000`"
echo -n "${key##*$}"
}
local var_key="VAR_`mkkey "$key"`"
# ...
How to make eval safe
eval can be safely used - but all of its arguments need to be quoted first. Here's how:
This function which will do it for you:
function token_quote {
local quoted=()
for token; do
quoted+=( "$(printf '%q' "$token")" )
done
printf '%s\n' "${quoted[*]}"
}
Example usage:
Given some untrusted user input:
% input="Trying to hack you; date"
Construct a command to eval:
% cmd=(echo "User gave:" "$input")
Eval it, with seemingly correct quoting:
% eval "$(echo "${cmd[#]}")"
User gave: Trying to hack you
Thu Sep 27 20:41:31 +07 2018
Note you were hacked. date was executed rather than being printed literally.
Instead with token_quote():
% eval "$(token_quote "${cmd[#]}")"
User gave: Trying to hack you; date
%
eval isn't evil - it's just misunderstood :)
I’ll split this answer in two parts, which, I think, cover a large proportion of the cases where people tend to be tempted by eval:
Running weirdly built commands
Fiddling with dynamically named variables
Running weirdly built commands
Many, many times, simple indexed arrays are enough, provided that you take on good habits regarding double quotes to protect expansions while defining the array.
# One nasty argument which must remain a single argument and not be split:
f='foo bar'
# The command in an indexed array (use `declare -a` if you really want to be explicit):
cmd=(
touch
"$f"
# Yet another nasty argument, this time hardcoded:
'plop yo'
)
# Let Bash expand the array and run it as a command:
"${cmd[#]}"
This will create foo bar and plop yo (two files, not four).
Note that sometimes it can produce more readable scripts to put just the arguments (or a bunch of options) in the array (at least you know at first glance what you’re running):
touch "${args[#]}"
touch "${opts[#]}" file1 file2
As a bonus, arrays let you, easily:
Add comments about a specific argument:
cmd=(
# Important because blah blah:
-v
)
Group arguments for readability by leaving blank lines within the array definition.
Comment out specific arguments for debugging purposes.
Append arguments to your command, sometimes dynamically according to specific conditions or in loops:
cmd=(myprog)
for f in foo bar
do
cmd+=(-i "$f")
done
if [[ $1 = yo ]]
then
cmd+=(plop)
fi
to_be_added=(one two 't h r e e')
cmd+=("${to_be_added[#]}")
Define commands in configuration files while allowing for configuration-defined whitespace-containing arguments:
readonly ENCODER=(ffmpeg -blah --blah 'yo plop')
# Deprecated:
#readonly ENCODER=(avconv -bloh --bloh 'ya plap')
# […]
"${ENCODER[#]}" foo bar
Log a robustly runnable command, that perfectly represents what is being run, using printf’s %q:
function please_log_that {
printf 'Running:'
# From `help printf`:
# “The format is re-used as necessary to consume all of the arguments.”
# From `man printf` for %q:
# “printed in a format that can be reused as shell input,
# escaping non-printable characters with the proposed POSIX $'' syntax.”
printf ' %q' "$#"
echo
}
arg='foo bar'
cmd=(prog "$arg" 'plop yo' $'arg\nnewline\tand tab')
please_log_that "${cmd[#]}"
# ⇒ “Running: prog foo\ bar plop\ yo $'arg\nnewline\tand tab'”
# You can literally copy and paste that ↑ to a terminal and get the same execution.
Enjoy better syntax highlighting than with eval strings, since you don’t need to nest quotes or use $-s that “will not be evaluated right away but will be at some point”.
To me, the main advantage of this approach (and conversely disadvantage of eval) is that you can follow the same logic as usual regarding quotation, expansion, etc. No need to rack your brain trying to put quotes in quotes in quotes “in advance” while trying to figure out which command will interpret which pair of quotes at which moment. And of course many of the things mentioned above are harder or downright impossible to achieve with eval.
With these, I never had to rely on eval in the past six years or so, and readability and robustness (in particular regarding arguments that contain whitespace) were arguably increased. You don’t even need to know whether IFS has been tempered with! Of course, there are still edge cases where eval might actually be needed (I suppose, for example, if the user has to be able to provide a full fledged piece of script via an interactive prompt or whatever), but hopefully that’s not something you’ll come across on a daily basis.
Fiddling with dynamically named variables
declare -n (or its within-functions local -n counterpart), as well as ${!foo}, do the trick most of the time.
$ help declare | grep -- -n
-n make NAME a reference to the variable named by its value
Well, it’s not exceptionally clear without an example:
declare -A global_associative_array=(
[foo]=bar
[plop]=yo
)
# $1 Name of global array to fiddle with.
fiddle_with_array() {
# Check this if you want to make sure you’ll avoid
# circular references, but it’s only if you really
# want this to be robust.
# You can also give an ugly name like “__ref” to your
# local variable as a cheaper way to make collisions less likely.
if [[ $1 != ref ]]
then
local -n ref=$1
fi
printf 'foo → %s\nplop → %s\n' "${ref[foo]}" "${ref[plop]}"
}
# Call the function with the array NAME as argument,
# not trying to get its content right away here or anything.
fiddle_with_array global_associative_array
# This will print:
# foo → bar
# plop → yo
(I love this trick ↑ as it makes me feel like I’m passing objects to my functions, like in an object-oriented language. The possibilities are mind-boggling.)
As for ${!…} (which gets the value of the variable named by another variable):
foo=bar
plop=yo
for var_name in foo plop
do
printf '%s = %q\n' "$var_name" "${!var_name}"
done
# This will print:
# foo = bar
# plop = yo
I'm writing a cPanel postwwwact script, if you're not familiar with the script its run after a new account is created. it relies on the user account variable being passed to the script which i then use for various things (creating databases etc). However, I can't seem to find the right way to access the variable i want. I'm not that good with shell scripts so i'd appreciate some advice. I had read somewhere that the value i wanted would be included in $ARGV{'user'} but this simply gives "root" as opposed to the value i need. I've tried looping through all the arguments (list of arguments here) like this:
#!/bin/sh
for var
do
touch /root/testvars/$var
done
and the value i want is in there, i'm just not sure how to accurately target it. There's info here on doing this with PHP or Perl but i have to do this as a shell script.
EDIT Ideally i would like to be able to call the variable by something other than $1 or $2 etc as this would create issues if an argument is added or removed
..for example in the PHP code here:
function argv2array ($argv) {
$opts = array();
$argv0 = array_shift($argv);
while(count($argv)) {
$key = array_shift($argv);
$value = array_shift($argv);
$opts[$key] = $value;
}
return $opts;
}
// allows you to do the following:
$opts = argv2array($argv);
echo $opts[‘user’];
Any ideas?
The parameters are passed to your script as a hash:
/scripts/$hookname user $user password $password
You can use associative arrays in Bash 4, or in earlier versions of Bash you can use built up variable names.
#!/bin/bash
# Bash >= 4
declare -A argv
for ((i=1;i<=${##};i+=2))
do
argv[${#:i:1}]="${#:$((i+1)):1}"
done
echo ${argv['user']}
Or
#!/bin/bash
# Bash < 4
for ((i=1;i<=${##};i+=2))
do
declare ARGV${#:i:1}="${#:$((i+1)):1}"
done
echo ${!ARGV*} # outputs all variable names that begin with ARGV
echo $ARGVuser
Running either:
$ ./argvtest user dennis password secret
dennis
Note: you can also use shift to step through the arguments, but it's destructive and the methods above leave $# ($1, $2, etc.) in place.
#!/bin/bash
# Bash < 4
# using shift (can use in Bash 4, also)
for ((i=1;i<=${##}+2;i++))
do
declare ARGV$1="$2"
# Bash 4: argv[$1}]="$2"
shift 2
done
echo ${!ARGV*}
echo $ARGVuser
If it's passed as a command-line parameter to the script, it's available as $1 if it's first parameter, $2 for the second, and so on.
Why not start off your script with something like
ARG_USER=$1
ARG_FOO=$2
ARG_BAR=$3
And then later in your script refer to $ARG_USER, $ARG_FOO and $ARG_BAR instead of $1, $2, and $3. That way, if you decide to change the order of arguments, or insert a new argument somewhere other than at the end, there is only one place in your code that you need to update the association between argument order and argument meaning.
You could even do more complex processing of $* to set your $ARG_WHATEVER variables, if it's not always going to be that all of the are specified in the same order every time.
You can do the following:
#!/bin/bash
for var in $argv; do
<do whatver you want with $var>
done
And then, invoke the script as:
$ /path/to/script param1 arg2 item3 item4 etc
A script is misbehaving. I need to know who calls that script, and who calls the calling script, and so on, only by modifying the misbehaving script.
This is similar to a stack-trace, but I am not interested in a call stack of function calls within a single bash script.
Instead, I need the chain of executed programs/scripts that is initiated by my script.
A simple script I wrote some days ago...
# FILE : sctrace.sh
# LICENSE : GPL v2.0 (only)
# PURPOSE : print the recursive callers' list for a script
# (sort of a process backtrace)
# USAGE : [in a script] source sctrace.sh
#
# TESTED ON :
# - Linux, x86 32-bit, Bash 3.2.39(1)-release
# REFERENCES:
# [1]: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/internalvariables.html#PROCCID
# [2]: http://linux.die.net/man/5/proc
# [3]: http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_tac.htm
#! /bin/bash
TRACE=""
CP=$$ # PID of the script itself [1]
while true # safe because "all starts with init..."
do
CMDLINE=$(cat /proc/$CP/cmdline)
PP=$(grep PPid /proc/$CP/status | awk '{ print $2; }') # [2]
TRACE="$TRACE [$CP]:$CMDLINE\n"
if [ "$CP" == "1" ]; then # we reach 'init' [PID 1] => backtrace end
break
fi
CP=$PP
done
echo "Backtrace of '$0'"
echo -en "$TRACE" | tac | grep -n ":" # using tac to "print in reverse" [3]
... and a simple test.
I hope you like it.
You can use Bash Debugger http://bashdb.sourceforge.net/
Or, as mentioned in the previous comments, the caller bash built-in. See: http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/commands/builtin/caller
i=0; while caller $i ;do ((i++)) ;done
Or as a bash function:
dump_stack(){
local i=0
local line_no
local function_name
local file_name
while caller $i ;do ((i++)) ;done | while read line_no function_name file_name;do echo -e "\t$file_name:$line_no\t$function_name" ;done >&2
}
Another way to do it is to change PS4 and enable xtrace:
PS4='+$(date "+%F %T") ${FUNCNAME[0]}() $BASH_SOURCE:${BASH_LINENO[0]}+ '
set -o xtrace # Comment this line to disable tracing.
~$ help caller
caller: caller [EXPR]
Returns the context of the current subroutine call.
Without EXPR, returns "$line $filename". With EXPR,
returns "$line $subroutine $filename"; this extra information
can be used to provide a stack trace.
The value of EXPR indicates how many call frames to go back before the
current one; the top frame is frame 0.
Since you say you can edit the script itself, simply put a:
ps -ef >/tmp/bash_stack_trace.$$
in it, where the problem is occurring.
This will create a number of files in your tmp directory that show the entire process list at the time it happened.
You can then work out which process called which other process by examining this output. This can either be done manually, or automated with something like awk, since the output is regular - you just use those PID and PPID columns to work out the relationships between all the processes you're interested in.
You'll need to keep an eye on the files, since you'll get one per process so they may have to be managed. Since this is something that should only be done during debugging, most of the time that line will be commented out (preceded by #), so the files won't be created.
To clean them up, you can simply do:
rm /tmp/bash_stack_trace.*
UPDATE:
The code below should work. Now I have a newer answer with a newer code version that allows a message inserted in the stacktrace.
IIRC I just couldn't find this answer to update it as well at the time. But now decided code is better kept in git so latest version of the above should be in this gist.
original code-corrected answer below:
There was another answer about this somewhere but here is a function to use for getting stack trace in the sense used for example in the java programming language. You call the function and it puts the stack trace into the variable $STACK. It show the code points that led to get_stack being called. This is mostly useful for complicated execution where single shell sources multiple script snippets and nesting.
function get_stack () {
STACK=""
# to avoid noise we start with 1 to skip get_stack caller
local i
local stack_size=${#FUNCNAME[#]}
for (( i=1; i<$stack_size ; i++ )); do
local func="${FUNCNAME[$i]}"
[ x$func = x ] && func=MAIN
local linen="${BASH_LINENO[(( i - 1 ))]}"
local src="${BASH_SOURCE[$i]}"
[ x"$src" = x ] && src=non_file_source
STACK+=$'\n'" "$func" "$src" "$linen
done
}
adding pstree -p -u `whoami` >>output in your script will probably get you the information you need.
The simplest script which returns a stack trace with all callers:
i=0; while caller $i ;do ((i++)) ;done
You could try something like
strace -f -e execve script.sh