Can we unshift the positional params? I have a complex function that has shifts throughout and at one point there's a while loop:
shift
while [ "$1" ]; do
if [ a ]; then b; c fi
if [ d ]; then e; f fi
if [ g ]; then h; i fi
...
shift
done
... works fine, but I'm thinking to restructure it:
shift
while [ "$1" ]; do
if [ a ]; then b; c; continue fi
if [ d ]; then e; f; continue fi
if [ g ]; then h; i; continue fi
...
shift
done
... because only one 'if' test will be relevant per loop and the remaining 'if' tests might even do some bad stuff. The problem of course is that if I 'continue', the final 'shift' is missed. I could do this:
# shift
while [ "$2" ]; do
shift
if [ a ]; then b; c; continue fi
if [ d ]; then e; f; continue fi
if [ g ]; then h; i; continue fi
...
# shift
done
... except that the leading (commented) 'shift' might happen in any number of places and changing them all would be troublesome. It can be done of course, but I'm wondering if we have some way of faking this:
shift
unshift
while [ "$1" ]; do
shift
if [ a ]; then b; c; continue fi
if [ d ]; then e; f; continue fi
if [ g ]; then h; i; continue fi
...
# shift
done
... it looks pointless above, however note that the leading 'shift' might in fact have happened in any one of several different places all of which would need to be reworked and it's fragile, so the 'unshift' would take care of it in one place, at least temporarily. I know we don't have an official unshift, but can it be faked? Of course there's also this:
...
if [ a ]; then b; c; shift; continue fi
...
... but I'm wondering about a more succinct logic. The quick and dirty 'unshift' idea would solve a temporary problem very nicely.