Mastering Bash

The positional parameters ($* and $")

The first ($*) represents all the positional parameters as a single string and the second ($") represents all the positional parameters as follows:

#!/bin/bashcounter=0echo "First trying the \$*"for i in "$*"do(( counter+=1 ))echo $counterdonecounter=0echo "And now \$@"for i in "$@"do(( counter+=1 ))echo $counterdone

Now, let's test it:

zarrelli$ ./positional-single.sh 1 2 3 4 5First trying the $*1And now $@12345

As we can see in the first case, the parameters are passed as single words, but beware, $* must be quoted to avoid weird side effects of the expansion. $@ passes each parameter as a quoted string without any interpretation.