Consume positional arguments one at a time.

Bash Scripts: Check the argument count before accessing the first parameter with nounset enabled.

set -euo pipefail
set -- one "two words"
while (($#)); do
  printf "%s\n" "$1"
  shift
done

Expected output EXAMPLE

one
two words

Details

Requires Bash 4 or later. Save as snippet.sh and run bash snippet.sh in an empty working directory. Check the argument count before accessing the first parameter with nounset enabled.

✓ Verified

Tested on Ubuntu 24.04.5 LTS · 2026-11-02 18:22:51 UTC · GNU bash, version 5.2.21(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) · bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3

Test inputs, results and environment

The exact published code ran in a dedicated Linux test container with prepared inputs. Snippet process uid 65534 with a read-only root filesystem and temporary working files. Networking disabled. Fixtures and output records are isolated from the application database. Testing covers this example and its stated checks, not every input, operating system, or runtime version. The Linux container shares its host's kernel; this is not a native Windows test.

Architecture / host kernel: x86_64 / 6.18.54.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2
Snippet identity / locale: uid=65534, gid=65534 (unprivileged process) / C.UTF-8
Interpreter invocation: bash -euo pipefail -c <published code>
Container image ID: sha256:ec91410a8f6ec3e985830b5e3a0560306d36f8c1c5ccd91a6699abe707123fa3
Code SHA-256: eb32723daab60e7d3802d29a0c516944a874ec3819edf833db3fb1306e3851dd
Dependencies: bash 5.2.21-2ubuntu4; coreutils 9.4-3ubuntu6.3

Test input setup

These are the prepared inputs used by the test harness. See Details above for the prerequisites and how to run this example.

# No input files required.

Observed standard output

one
two words

Exit code: 0. Standard error: empty. Validation: Exact stdout comparison. System-dependent values above are one recorded run.