Passing arguments from one script to another

Question

Let's say I am in a Bash script and am sourcing a file. How do I pass variables to another script after I source the file like this.

sed -i 's/ = /=/' $file
source $file

Let's say file contains

variable1=10
variable2=apple

If I want to use these in another script, how do I pass these arguments to the other script, then run the script in my current Bash script.

Answer 1

You would pass them pretty much the same as you would pass arguments in any other way:

sed -i 's/ = /=/' "$file"
source "$file"

/path/to/another/script.sh "$variable1" "$variable2"

Obviously using the appropriate command line switches (or not if applicable).

If using the code as above, the value of $variable1 will be available in the other script as $1 (the 1st command line argument), while $variable2 will be available as $2.

To keep the original names in your new script you would need to reassign them using the positional parameters, ie:

variable1=$1
variable2=$2

However this may not be the most efficient way to do this, you might be better off with the suggestion below:

---

It sounds like you may actually want to source your file within the second script and not the first. In which case you may want to do the following:

script1.sh:

sed -i 's/ = /=/' "$file"
/path/to/another/script2.sh "$file"

script2.sh:

file=$1
source "$file"
printf '%s\n' "$variable1"
printf '%s\n' "$variable2"

Related recommended reading: 3.4.1 Positional Parameters

Note: assigning $1 to the file variable is not necessary, you could also simply source "$1" but I have written it this way in an attempt to show how positional parameters are handled

Answer 2

If there aren't too many variables you want to pass, it's reasonable to just set them on the line where you call the subscript:

sed -i 's/ = /=/' "$file"
source "$file"

variable1=$variable1 variable2=$variable2 /path/to/another/script.sh