How to pass argument with spaces to a shell script function?

Question

I'm trying to pass multiple argument to a function, but one of them is consist of two words and I want shell function to deal with it as one arg:

args=("$@")
function(){
 echo ${args[0]}
 echo ${args[1]}
 echo ${args[2]}
}

when I call this command sh shell hi hello guys bye

I get this

hi

hello

guys

But what I really want is:

hi 
hello guys
bye

Answer 1

You should just quote the second argument.

myfunc(){
        echo "$1"
        echo "$2"
        echo "$3"
}

myfunc hi "hello guys" bye

Answer 2

It is the same as calling anything (a shell script, a C program, a python program, …) from a shell

If calling from any Unix shell, and the parameter has spaces, then you need to quote it.

sh my-shell-script hi "hello guys" bye

You can also use single quotes, these are more powerful. They stop the shell from interpreting anything ($, !, \, *, ", etc, except ')

sh my-shell-script hi 'hello guys' bye

You should also quote every variable used within the function/script.

Note that in your example the arguments are falling apart before they get to the function (as they are passed to the script).

#!/bin/sh
my_procedure{
   echo "$1"
   echo "$2"
   echo "$3"
}
my_procedure("$@")

There is no way to do it automatically, in the script, as there is no way for the script to know which spaces are which (which words are together).