How do I break up an extremely long string literal in bash?

Question

It's a bit of a hack, but this works:

mycommand \
    --server myserver \
    --filename "extremely/long/file/name/"`
               `"that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break/"`
               `"up/if/possible" \
    --otherflag \
    --anotherflag

Bash concatenates string literals that are adjacent, so we take advantage of that. For example, echo "hi" "there" prints hi there whereas echo "hi""there" prints hithere.

It also takes advantage of the backtick operator, and the fact that a bunch of spaces evaluates to nothing.

You can use a variable :

file=extremely/long/file/name
file+=/that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break
file+=/up/if/possible

mycommand\
    --server myserver\
    --filename $file\
    --flag flag

I define a short strcat function at the top of my bash script and use an inline invocation to split things up. I sometimes prefer it to using a separate variable because I can define the long literal in-line with the command invocation.

function strcat() {
  local IFS=""
  echo -n "$*"
}

mycommand \
  --server myserver \
  --filename "$(strcat \
      extremely/long/file/name/ \
      that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break/ \
      up/if/possible)" \
  --otherflag \
  --anotherflag \

I also like this approach for when I have to enter a long CSV of values as a flag parameter because I can use it to avoid typing the comma between values:

function strjoin() {
  local IFS="$1"
  shift
  echo -n "$*"
}

csv_args=(
  foo=hello
  bar=world
  "this=arg  has  spaces  in  it"
)
mycommand \
  --server myserver \
  --csv_args "$(strjoin , "${csv_args[@]}")" \
  --otherflag \
  --anotherflag \

Which is equivalent to

mycommand \
  --server myserver \
  --csv_args "foo=hello,bar=world,this=arg  has  spaces  in  it" \
  --otherflag \
  --anotherflag \

One can also use an array variable

file=(extremely/long/file/name
    /that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break
    /up/if/possible)
IFS=''

echo mycommand\
    --server myserver\
    --filename "${file[*]}"\
    --flag flag