Bash Tip - Run Command with multiple arguments with ssh

This is a note for logging my simple way to use ssh and bash with continuous integration on remote server.

You can execute the following test-cases.sh on your host.

It will execute remote script of the test with correct argument contents.

source code of test-cases.sh on host

	#/bin/bash
	# 2019 Ben Wei <ben@juluos.org>
	#
	# This is a example script for CI tests for blog
	# if not defined in environment variable
	# you can use the following command to defined it
	#
	# export TEST_SSH_HOST="your_ssh_host"
	#
	function run_cases()
	{
	local case_name="$1"
	local args=""
	while [ ! "x$1" = "x" ]; do
	printf -v __ %q "$1"
	args="$args \"$__\""
	shift
	done
	if [ "x${TEST_SSH_HOST}" = "x" ]; then
	TEST_SSH_HOST=test-server
	fi
	ssh ${TEST_SSH_HOST} "cd test-cases; /bin/bash ./tests.sh $args"
	return $?
	}

view raw test-cases.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

directory layout of tester account on test-server

source code of tests.sh on test-server

	#!/bin/bash
	i=1
	while [ ! "x$1" = "x" ]; do
	echo "argv[$i]=[$1]"
	shift
	i=$((i + 1))
	done

view raw tests.sh hosted with ❤ by GitHub

result of test-cases.sh example

source ./test-cases.sh

➜  ~ run_cases "\"1\"\"" "b'\"" "c'#\"" "\"\"" "\'"

ssh test-server cd test-cases; /bin/bash ./tests.sh  "\"1\"\"" "b\'\"" "c\'\#\"" "\"\"" "\\'"

argv[1]=["1""]

argv[2]=[b\'"]

argv[3]=[c\'\#"]

argv[4]=[""]

argv[5]=[\\']

Notes

printf %q  is use to make safe quote the argument if hashtag(#), quote('), double quote(") and so on.

Appendix

• wikipedia - Bash_(Unix_shell)
• Bash Guide for Beginners -- Machtelt Garrels