On Sun, 06 Jun 2004, Klaus Heinz wrote:
>   #! /bin/sh
>   echo "number of parameters: $#"
>   while test $# -gt 0; do
>         if test "1" = "$1"; then shift; fi
>         params="$params $1"

This loses any embedded spaces in $1.

You need to mix in a shell-quotify function and an eval,
like this:

  #! /bin/sh

  # shell-quotify: insert backslashes where appropriate
  # to protect a string from the shell.
  shell-quotify ()
  {
    printf "%s" "$1" | sed -e 's/\([^-=+:,./A-Za-z0-9]\)/\\\1/g'
  }

  echo "number of parameters: $#"
  while test $# -gt 0; do
        if test "1" = "$1"; then shift; fi
        params="$params $(shell-quotify "$1")"
        shift # ignore the case where $# was 1 and I shift two times
  done
  eval set -- $params
  echo "number of parameters: $#"

--apb (Alan Barrett)