Passing named arguments to shell scripts

If you don't mind being limited to single-letter argument names i.e. my_script -p '/some/path' -a5, then in bash you could use the built-in getopts, e.g.

#!/bin/bash

while getopts ":a:p:" opt; do
  case $opt in
    a) arg_1="$OPTARG"
    ;;
    p) p_out="$OPTARG"
    ;;
    \?) echo "Invalid option -$OPTARG" >&2
    ;;
  esac
done

printf "Argument p_out is %s\n" "$p_out"
printf "Argument arg_1 is %s\n" "$arg_1"

Then you can do

$ ./my_script -p '/some/path' -a5
Argument p_out is /some/path
Argument arg_1 is 5

There is a helpful Small getopts tutorial or you can type help getopts at the shell prompt.

I stole this from drupal.org, but you could do something like this:

while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
  case "$1" in
    --p_out=*)
      p_out="${1#*=}"
      ;;
    --arg_1=*)
      arg_1="${1#*=}"
      ;;
    *)
      printf "***************************\n"
      printf "* Error: Invalid argument.*\n"
      printf "***************************\n"
      exit 1
  esac
  shift
done

The only caveat is that you have to use the syntax my_script --p_out=/some/path --arg_1=5.

I use this script and works like a charm:

for ARGUMENT in "$@"
do

    KEY=$(echo $ARGUMENT | cut -f1 -d=)
    VALUE=$(echo $ARGUMENT | cut -f2 -d=)   

    case "$KEY" in
            STEPS)              STEPS=${VALUE} ;;
            REPOSITORY_NAME)    REPOSITORY_NAME=${VALUE} ;;     
            *)   
    esac    


done

echo "STEPS = $STEPS"
echo "REPOSITORY_NAME = $REPOSITORY_NAME"

Usage

bash my_scripts.sh  STEPS="ABC" REPOSITORY_NAME="stackexchange"

Console result :

STEPS = ABC
REPOSITORY_NAME = stackexchange

STEPS and REPOSITORY_NAME are ready to use in the script.

It does not matter what order the arguments are in.