bash "pass through" script for android build, space issue

Question

I have an android build i need to customize, the question is ehre and not in stackoverflow because my issue wis with bash. I wrote a script:

#!/bin/bash -xv
params=$@
if [ "$#" -ge "2" ]; then
    params=$1
    shift
    params="$params --custom-package com.some.package"
    while [ "$#" -gt "0" ]; do
        temp=$1
        echo $1 | grep ' ' > /dev/null
        if [ "$?" -eq "0" ]; then
            temp=\"$1\"
        fi
        params="$params $temp"
        shift
    done

fi
path=$(echo $0|xargs dirname)
echo $params
$path/aapt-orig $params

the script suppose to take the parameters it got, add --custom-package com.some.package parameter and keep the rest of the params, the first ($1) param is the action so i need to keep it first.

The problem is with spaces in directory names './my android dir/' for example. if i just pass the parameter through: param ="$param $1"; shit; if i have spaces in the name it doesn't work cause the new param is not escaped(with "), if i use the code above it still doesn't work because for some reason bash ignores the " char and still consider the space in the middle as a separate parameter! here is the output from the run: './aapt action "/Users/bankleumi/some dir/" another_param'

'[' 0 -eq 0 ']'
+ temp='"/Users/bankleumi/some dir/"'
+ params='action --custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet "/Users/bankleumi/some dir/"'
+ shift
+ '[' 1 -gt 0 ']'
+ temp=another_param
+ echo another_param
+ grep ' '
+ '[' 1 -eq 0 ']'
+ params='action --custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet "/Users/bankleumi/some dir/" another_param'
+ shift
+ '[' 0 -gt 0 ']'
path=$(echo $0|xargs dirname)
echo $0|xargs dirname
++ echo ./aapt
++ xargs dirname
+ path=.
echo $params
+ echo action --custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet '"/Users/bankleumi/some' 'dir/"' another_param
action --custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet "/Users/bankleumi/some dir/" another_param
$path/aapt-orig $params
+ ./aapt-orig action --custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet '"/Users/bankleumi/some' 'dir/"' another_param

As you can see in the end in the printing of the echo bash consider the string "/Users/bankleumi/some dir" as two strings even though there are \" integrated IN the string! how can i make bash leave the space alone? ( i tried playing with IFS and it didn't work either...)

Answer 1

Don't mess with re-quoting, it won't work due to the way sh/bash use word-splitting on variables -- that is, they split the value without first considering the quotes in the value.

You could get around that by using eval "$path/aapt-orig $params"...

But Bash has arrays, use them instead:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
args=()
args+=("$1"); shift
args+=(--custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet)
for arg in "$@"; do
    args+=("$arg")
done
exec "$(dirname "$0")/aapt-orig" "${args[@]}"

Or even simpler:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
exec "${0%/*}/aapt-orig" "$1" --custom-package com.leumi.leumiwallet "${@:2}"

Answer 2

This should work with more shells, and may be easier to understand:

#!/bin/sh
first="$1"; shift;
exec "`dirname '$0'`/aapt-orig" "$first" --custom-package com.foo.bar "$@";

Note that it works because shells treat "$@" specially, see section "Special Parameters" in the Bash manpage.