zsh bindkey does not work in a function

Question

I wrote a small function for .zshrc to load plugins and set their keybindings

function loadPlugin() {
    # Function to load external zsh plugins and set keybindings.
    pluginName=$1
    pluginPath=$2
    if [ -r $pluginPath ];then
    source $pluginPath
    else
    echo "$pluginName plugin can not be found at: $pluginPath"
    fi

    # set keybindings
    shift
    shift

    while [[ $# > 0 ]]; do
    bindkey -M emacs '$1' '$2'
    shift
    shift
    done
}

The loading part works, but it does not set the keybindings:

loadPlugin "History search" \
       "$HOME/zsh.d/plugins/zsh-history-substring-search/zsh-history-substring-search.zsh" \
       '^p' "history-substring-search-up" \
       '^n' "history-substring-search-down"

There is no error output, and if I called the binding commands outside the function after calling it with the same arguments they would work.

bindkey -M emacs '^p' "history-substring-search-up"
bindkey -M emacs '^n' "history-substring-search-down"

Answer 1

Your single quotes prevent $1 and $2 from being expanded. Use double-quotes instead.

bindkey -M emacs "$1" "$2"