How can I skip the first argument in an ash/dash shell function?

Question

In an ash/dash function, I can refer to the full parameter list like this:

allparameters() { echo "$@"; }

Which gives me:

$ allparameters yyyyy abffcd efgh
yyyyy abffcd efgh

I want to skip yyyyy, so I tried ${@:2}:

butlast() { echo "${@:2}"; }

However, this skips the first two characters:

$ butlast yyyyy abffcd efgh
yyy abffcd efgh
$ butlast abffcd efgh
ffcd efgh

I wasn’t able to find the colon syntax in the man page for ash, so that may be a bash-ism. What is the equivalent?

It looks like `ash` is applying `:` to a single string formed from the positional arguments, rather than the "array" of arguments. Not sure if that's a bug or expected (but undocumented) behavior. In `dash` it's just a "bad substitution" error. — chepner, Mar 26 '19 at 15:30

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 26 '19 at 15:21

3

${name:offset} is a bashism, but you can use the POSIX shift command for what you want.

$ butlast() { shift; echo "$@"; }
$ butlast foo bar baz
bar baz

answered Mar 26 '19 at 15:21

chepner

1 Answers1