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what does $#,$* means

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# 1  
Old 03-25-2009
Question what does $#,$* means
Smilie Hi,

In some script i got these regular expression

like ,
n=$#
and
for i in $*

can anybody let me know, what does it means
# 2  
Old 03-25-2009
$#-no of arguments
$*-the arguments
write below in a test file
Code:
echo $#
echo $*

run that as
Code:
test 1 2 3 4

o/p will be
Code:
4
1 2 3 4

hope you got it.. google it you will get lot of answersSmilie
# 3  
Old 03-26-2009
from Chapter 9 of the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide - bash internal variables
# 4  
Old 03-26-2009
thanks ..... Smilie
# 5  
Old 04-01-2009
Thank You Yogesh for the link. Good piece of information there in that link.
# 6  
Old 04-01-2009
To your problem I suggest in following way:

Basically, there are two ways of reading inputs:
Type 01: Command Line
Type 02: Interactive way
Your problem is pertaining to the Type 01: this is method is used when we do not know the numbers of arguments that are present in the command line prompt. For this shell uses positional parameters like $0, $*, $#, $?, etc .
E.g. 01:
echo “The Number of Arguments: $#”
echo “The List of Arguments”
for i in $*
do
echo $i
done

E.g. 02:
echo “The Number of Arguments: $#”
echo “The List of Arguments”
for i
do
echo $i
done

In the Type 02 method usually we are reading the inputs through read construct of shell and print the variable using for loop as fallows:
E.g. 01
echo “Enter the argument1”
read a
echo “Enter the argument2”
read b
for i in $a $b
do
echo $i
done
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