How to access remaining arguments in a fish script

Question

my-fish-script a b c d

Say you want to get the all arguments from the second argument onwards, so b c d.

In bash you can use

Answer 1

In fish, your arguments are contained in the $argv list. Use list slicing to access a range of elements, e.g. $argv[2..-1] returns all arguments from the second to the last.

For example

function loop --description "loop <count> <command>"
  for i in (seq 1 $argv[1])
    eval $argv[2..-1]
  end
end

Usage

$ loop 3 echo hello world
hello world
hello world
hello world

Answer 2

You could also use read which is more readable in my opinion:

function loop
  echo $argv | read -l count command
  for i in (seq 1 $count)
    eval $command
  end
end

This works better especially when you want to use more than the first argument.

echo $argv | read -l first second rest

Answer 3

The behaviour of the shift command can be simulated with set -e/--erase VARIABLE_NAME.

The idea is to erase the first argument, then get the remaining arguments from the $argv list.

For example

function loop  --description "loop <count> <command>"
  set count $argv[1]
  set --erase argv[1]
  for i in (seq 1 $count)
    eval $argv
  end
end

Usage

$ loop 3 echo hello world
hello world
hello world
hello world