Passing arguments with space to linux service

Question

I have a script that accepts parameters that I'd like to be able to run as a linux service. There is a symlink to it from /etc/ini.t/deploy to the actual script.

If I run

/etc/init.d/deploy --machine NAME --message "Hello World"

everything works find and the script receives 4 arguments:

      '--machine',
      'NAME',
      '--message',
      'Hello World'

On the other hand, if I run it as

/sbin/service deploy  --machine NAME --message "Hello World"

then the script receives 5 parameters:

      '--machine',
      'NAME',
      '--message',
      'Hello',
      'World'

The same happens both in Perl and Python, so as I understand it is the "service" that passes the arguments after splitting up on space. What can I do to make this work the same way with "service" as when calling directly?

Answer 1

That's the problem of passing arguments. Obviously something is not passed verbatim in your context but interpretingly, so to speak.

You can use the workaround of quoting your stuff twice:

/sbin/service deploy  --machine NAME --message '"Hello World"'

In many cases this solves the issue.

A more general approach is to use the printf "%q" of modern bashs:

/sbin/service deploy  --machine NAME --message "$(printf "%q" "Hello World")"

This generates a quoted version of the given string.