hints on shell string expansion ?

[Enache Adrian]

On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 12:46:26AM -0700, Luigi Rizzo wrote:
> Hi,
> i need a bit of help from creative /bin/sh users...
> 
> I am writing a script to generate ipfw test cases, and as
> part of the script i need to generate 'actions' which can be either
> one or more, e.g.
> 
> a1="allow"
> a2="deny log"
> a3="pipe 10"
> 
> Now, this works:
> 
> 	for act in "$a1" "$a2" "$a3"; do
> 		echo "add $act ip from 1.2.3.4 to 5.6.7.8"
> 	done
> 
> but i because the string of actions is used in several places,
> I would love to find a way to group actions into a single
> variable and then write something like this
> 
> 	actions="allow 'deny log' 'pipe 10'"
> 	for act in $actions ; do
> 		echo "add $act ip from 1.2.3.4 to 5.6.7.8"
> 	done

Isn't this what you want ?

$ set allow "deny log" "pipe 10"
$ for act in "$@"; do echo "<$act>"; done
<allow>
<deny log>
<pipe 10>

Regards,
Adi