Question

I would like to embed a long command like this in a bash script:

mycommand \
    --server myserver \
    --filename extremely/long/file/name/that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break/up/if/possible \
    --otherflag \
    --anotherflag

with the long filename broken up.

I could do this:

# Insufficiently pretty
mycommand \
    --server myserver \
    --filename extremely/long/file/name/\
that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break/\
up/if/possible \
    --otherflag \
    --anotherflag \

but it breaks the flow. I would like to be able to write this:

# Doesn't work
mycommand \
    --server myserver \
    --filename extremely/long/file/name/\
         that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break/\
         up/if/possible \
    --otherflag \
    --anotherflag

but that doesn’t work because it breaks up the string literal.

Is there a way to tell bash to break a string literal but ignore any leading spaces?

Answer 1

You can use a variable :

file=extremely/long/file/name
file+=/that/i/would/like/to/be/able/to/break
file+=/up/if/possible

mycommand\
    --server myserver\
    --filename $file\
    --flag flag