Iterate the arguments in shell script ( arguments sent as a list from python file )

Question

I have tried below:

param_list = ("hi ", "life", "jam", "hello")

print param_list

subprocess.call(shlex.split('./test.sh *param_list'))

In my shell script, I want to loop through the list that I passed:

#!/bin/sh


for i in $*; do
  echo $i
done

But the above code prints *param_list not the ("hi ", "life", "jam", "hello"). Can someone help me with this requirement !!

Answer 1

Others have discussed the python side. For the shell, you need to use

for arg in "$@"; do

which will iterate over the args precisely as given, without being affected by word splitting or filename expansion.

To see the difference, try this:

# set positional parameters
set -- "first arg" "second arg" "*"

# Now, echo the args
for arg in "$@"; do echo "$arg"; done

# versus
for word in $*; do echo "$word"; done