Trying to make this work I have a script which needs to get a multi value argument separated by space
e.g ./script.sh -f something1 something2 while [[ $1 -gt 0 ]]; do case $1 in -u | --username ) shift USER=$1 ;; -p | --password ) shift PASSWORD=$1 ;; -o | --out ) shift OUT=$1 ;; -f | --file ) shift PACKAGE=$1 ;; -g | --group ) shift GROUP=$1 ;; -n | --name ) shift NAME=$1 ;; -help | --help ) help ;; download ) ACTION="download" ;; delete ) ACTION="delete" ;; * ) usage exit 1 esac shift done The correct syntax is like the following:
while [[ -n "$1" ]]; do case "$1" in -u | --username) USER="$2" ;; -p | --password) PASSWORD="$2" ;; -o | --out) OUT="$2" ;; -f | --file) PACKAGE="$2" ;; -g | --group) GROUP="$2" ;; -n | --name) NAME="$2" ;; -t | --test) TEST1="$2"; TEST2="$3"; shift 2 ;; -help | --help) help; exit 0 ;; download) ACTION="download" ;; delete) ACTION="delete" ;; * ) usage; exit 1 ;; esac shift done To pass multiple arguments separated by a space/spaces as a single parameter, make sure to quote them either with single/double quotes.
./script.sh -f 'something1 something2' or
./script.sh -f "something1 something2" 
~ bash -x standalonetest.sh -u damn -p password + [[ -n -u ]] + case "$1" in + USER=-u + shift + [[ -n damn ]] + case "$1" in + echo usage usage + exit 1 Problem is that it always goes to usage and exits.
There's already a shell builtin for such cases - getopts (not getopt) https://www.mkssoftware.com/docs/man1/getopts.1.asp
You can try something like this:
#!/bin/bash while getopts ":n:u:" opt do case $opt in n) name="$OPTARG" ;; u) user="$OPTARG" ;; \?) echo "Invalid option -$OPTARG" >&2 exit 1 ;; esac done echo "Name: $name" echo "User: $user" 