Re: retrieving invocation arguments

[Adam Spiers <adam@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Bart Schaefer (schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> On Sep 17, 11:23am, Adam Spiers wrote:
> }
> } Currently I have
> } 
> }   restart () {
> }       exec $SHELL "$SHELL_ARGS" "$@"
> }   }
> } 
> } and I do
> } 
> }   export SHELL_ARGS="$@"
> } 
> } in my ~/.switch_shell (run from bash).
> 
> Ah.  Well, "$@" doesn't include the option switches even in bash

That's OK, that "$@" refers to the arguments passed to .switch_shell,
which are hard-coded in my .bashrc rather than being those bash was
invoked with.

> Also, "$SHELL_ARGS" is going to be one argument where the original "$@"
> may have had several.
> 
> And I should repeat the warning about `export SHELL_ARGS="$@"' -- "$@"
> is an array with each element quoted, so what you've really written is
> 
>     export SHELL_ARGS="$1" "$2" "$3" ...
> 
> which is probably not what you meant.  Using "$@" works in bash because it
> treats the arguments to `export' as if they were assignment expressions;
> but in zsh that requires `setopt kshtypeset' (4.0.2 and later).

Yes, I was aware of that problem, although I guess what I actually
meant to write was

  export SHELL_ARGS="$*"

which should be a bit better, but still not ideal.  Anyhow,
dissatisfaction with this whole approach was the main reason for
asking the original question.

> Anyway, it's very difficult to restart the shell exactly as it was invoked
> unless you stash the arguments very early in .zshenv and have a cooperative
> /etc/zshenv.

I don't (and won't) have a cooperative /etc/zshenv, which is why it
would be nice if zsh itself made the information easily retrievable,
if it wouldn't be hard to implement cleanly.

> And now that's probably more glorious detail than I should have included.

:-)