How to access the last word in the command line argument

[teju]

How can one access the 'n'th word in the command line argument
ie. let there be an integer stored in a variable called 'n'.
I want to access the 'n'th word in the command line argument
Is there any way to do it??

thanx in advance

[bigtomrodney]

You can call in a variable by using in a script $1, $2, $3...for passed variables 1,2 and 3 respectively.

Is it that you want to check for the last variable passed or you know the specific count of the final variable/argument?

[teju]

no i want to know how to access an arbitrary element in the command line arguments.
For eg. Let us say that somehow out of the blues we get an integer which is between 1 & $# let this integer be stored in a variable called 'm'. The task is to access this 'm'th word in the command line.

[teju]

I dont want to use loops for this purpose.

[vsemaska]

How about this:

m=3

tmp="wrd=\"\$$m\""
eval $tmp
echo "$wrd"

[drl]

Hi.

There is a long thread related to this at: Finding the last command line argument (bash) - LinuxQuestions.org

The beginning title was "last argument", but there are many solutions to getting any argument you desire ... cheers, drl

[teju]

Thanks a lot fellas for ur help.....
i liked the solution of vsemaska....

[drl]

Hi.

If you decide to use that style, I suggest you generalize it by adding braces. Otherwise an expression beyond 9 becomes a problem:

#!/bin/sh

# @(#) s1       Demonstrate value of braces.

set -- a1x a2x a3x a4x a5x a6x a7x a8x a9x a10x a11x a12x a13x
set -- one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen

m=3

tmp="wrd=\"\$$m\""
eval $tmp
echo "$wrd"

m=13

tmp="wrd=\"\$$m\""
eval $tmp
echo "$wrd"

tmp="wrd=\"\${$m}\""
eval $tmp
echo "$wrd"

exit 0

Which produces:

% ./s1
three
one3
thirteen

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

[teju]

Let us assume that there is a line:
line="He is a very good boy"
Now I wanna get the 'n'th word of this line?
ie. if the value of n=3 then we should get the 3rd word of this line, which is "a"
in this case.

And once again no loops please...
thanx in advance.....

[mummaneni]

just assign the line to an array and you can retrieve the word whatever you want...

array=(He is a very good boy)
or
line="He is a very good boy"
array=($line)

echo ${array[3]} --> very