Question

I want to write a function for when I have something like the following

echo 1 2 3|pick

Pick will then take the arguments and I will do something with them.

How do I do this?

Answer 1

pick() {
  read -r arg1 arg2 remainder
  echo first arg is $arg1
  echo The remaining args are $remainder
}

–EDIT (response to question in comment)

One way to loop through the arguments:

pick() {
  read args;
  set $args;
  while test $# -ne 0; do
    echo $1
    shift
  done
}

On each iteration of the loop, $1 refers to an argument.