Bash function calling command given as argument

Question

How do you write a function in bash that executes the command that it is given as an argument, where

• The given command may be an alias
• Arguments must

Answer 1

You (uh, I) can use printf %q to escape the arguments. At first sight, escaping with printf and then doing eval always gives the same result as passing the arguments directly.

wrap() {
    echo Starting: "$@"
    eval $(printf "%q " "$@")
}

Answer 2

It seems to be possible with a double eval:

eval "eval x=($(alias y | cut -s -d '=' -f 2))"
# now the array x contains the split expansion of alias y
"${x[@]}" "${other_args[@]}"

So maybe your function could be written as follows:

wrap() {
    eval "eval prefix=($(alias $1 | cut -s -d '=' -f 2))"
    shift
    "${prefix[@]}" "$@"
}

However, eval is evil, and double eval is double evil, and aliases are not expanded in scripts for a reason.