Pass array to function parameter in terminal inside for loop

Question

I have the following code:

myfunc(){
    group=("$1")

    for i in "${group[@]}"
        do
            printf "%s\n" "$i"
        done
}

I am using it to print every item in the group array. This array should be a parameter in the terminal. But when I try to use it in the terminal inside the .bash_profile file it doesnt work. I am trying this by running the following command:

myfunc ("one" "two" "three")

Answer 1

You seem to be expecting the shell to generate some kind of anonymous array variable - AFAIK that's not possible in bash.

The simple approach is to pass individual arguments (which may contain whitespace, if properly quoted) and then refer to them with "$@"

myfunc ()
{
    group=("$@");
    for i in "${group[@]}"
    do
        printf "%s\n" "$i"
    done
}

then for example

$ myfunc "one nine" "two" "three four five"
one nine
two
three four five

although in this particular case I don't see any benefit of the additional array variable - you may as well just loop over "$@" directly:

myfunc ()
{
    for i in "$@"
    do
        printf "%s\n" "$i"
    done
}

---

If you just want it to "look like an array" in the calling context, then the only way I can think to do that would be to pass it as a string e.g. myfunc '("one nine" "two" "three four five")' and then eval the assignment inside your function eval group="$1" but I do not recommend doing that.