Question

I want to get the second last item given to a shell program. Currently I do it like this:

file1_tmp="${@: -2}"
oldIFS=$IFS
IFS=" "
count=0
for value in $file1; do
  if [[ count -e 0 ]]; then
    file1=$value
  fi
    count=1
done
oldIFS=$IFS 

I’m sure that there is a much easier way to do this. So how can I get the second last argument from a shell script input in as few lines as possible?

Answer 1

set -- "first argument" "second argument" \
       "third argument" "fourth argument" \
       "fifth argument"
second_to_last="${@:(-2):1}"
echo "$second_to_last"

Note the quoting, which ensures that arguments with whitespace stick together — which your original solution doesn’t do.