Reading quoted/escaped arguments correctly from a string

Question

I\'m encountering an issue passing an argument to a command in a Bash script.

poc.sh:

#!/bin/bash

ARGS=\'\"hi there\" test\'
./swap ${ARGS}
<         


        

Answer 1

Embedded quotes do not protect whitespace; they are treated literally. Use an array in bash:

args=( "hi there" test)
./swap "${args[@]}"

In POSIX shell, you are stuck using eval (which is why most shells support arrays).

args='"hi there" test'
eval "./swap $args"

As usual, be very sure you know the contents of $args and understand how the resulting string will be parsed before using eval.