Parsing the command line in BASH

Bash is a shell, but it's also a scripting language. You can make bash scripts, and you can pass parameters to it. You can access the parameters with $1, $2, ... But what if you need the whole command line?

Bash uses special variables for all kind of purposes. One of them is $* which contains the whole command line. You can use it rather than the $1, $2 if all you need is a string of text, passed on the command line.