Bash Forward ARGV to Command

As a programmer, you might occasionally need to pass command-line arguments from one command to another. In Bash shell scripting, you can achieve this by forwarding ARGV (argument vector) to another command.

Basic Syntax

The syntax for forwarding ARGV to another command is as follows:

command1 "arg1" "arg2" ... | command2 "$@"

In the above command, command1 accepts some arguments (arg1, arg2, ...), and their values are passed as input to command2 using the special parameter "$@". The "$@" parameter allows you to pass all of the arguments received by the script to the next command.

Example

Suppose you have a script named decrypt.sh which requires a password and file name to decrypt. You can use the following command to pass the password and input file name to decrypt.sh for decryption:

echo "mypassword" | decrypt.sh -i input_file.enc -o output_file -p "$@"

In the above command, echo is used to pass the password to decrypt.sh as input. The -i option specifies the input file name, -o specifies the output file name, and -p "$@" passes all other arguments as password.

Conclusion

Passing arguments from one command to another can be a powerful tool when working with shell scripting. By using the "$@" parameter, you can easily forward all or some of the arguements to other commands. This can save you time and effort when writing scripts.