External Sript parameters

[Umair]

I am passing an argument to an external script.
The argument is in the form abc-[0].

When i write external[abc-[0]], the script does not work and when i write, external[abc-0], it starts working.
The value passed to actual script by zabbix is "abc-[0"
It's ignoring the last bracket.

I need to pass these square brackets as a part of my program.
What can the problem be?

[xs-]

have you tried external[abc-\[0\]]

[Umair]

Yes, i tried that.
But even that does not work.

Somehow, everything which comes after the bracket ] is ignored.

[JimN]

Workaround for brackets in command line arguments

I have a similar issue with an external script I wrote. For the sake of
a simple example, lets say I need to call my script in Zabbix like this:
script.sh[-x value[x]=1]

I was unable to find out how to comment out the brackets with Zabbix, so
I made a modification to my script as a workaround. In my bash script,
I do:

XPATH=`echo "$XPATH" | tr '<' '['`
XPATH=`echo "$XPATH" | tr '>' ']'`

And then I call the script with:
script.sh[-x value<x>=1]

This allows me to use my script the normal way elsewhere, and the
modified way with Zabbix. The only issue of course would be if I needed
to pass '<' or '>' to my script, which is something I do not foresee.

Just choose two characters you know you won't need to pass to your
script, and use them instead of '[' and ']'.

If you don't have access to modify the script you are using, you could
create a wrapper for it.

Let's say you call the script like this on the commandline:
#/path/script abc-[0]

You could create a wrapper like this:

#!/bin/bash

ARGUMENT=$1
ARGUMENT=`echo "$ARGUMENT" | tr '<' '['`
ARGUMENT=`echo "$ARGUMENT" | tr '>' ']'`
/path/script $ARGUMENT

You could name that script wrapper.sh, and call it like this in Zabbix:
wrapper.sh[abc-<0>]

Your wrapper just replaces the '<' and '>' with '[' and ']' and then
calls the actual script.

-Jim

[Umair]

Thank you Jim.
That was a great Help!

I already implemented a workaround...
passed 'abc-[0' as an argument and then in bash i concatinated the incoming string with ']'

My script will always accept arguments in this way, so this works for me.