Passing negative parameters to a wolframscript

Question

How do you pass negative values as input for a wolframscript?

This documentation page explains that the syntax for passing parameters is:

wolframscript -file filename.m 1 2 3 output.txt

However it seems it doesn't work with negative parameters, since, for example, the -2 in

wolframscript -file filename.m 1 -2 3 output.txt

is interpreted as an option, not as a number/parameter and the script returns an error saying that:

Export::infer: Cannot infer format of file 1.

As MWE take for example the script:

arg=ToExpression/@Most@Rest[$ScriptCommandLine]; (*Drop first argument (which is filename.m by default) and last argument and transforms strings to numbers*)
file=Last[$ScriptCommandLine];  (*The last argument is the output file name*)
Export[file,arg];  (*Exports*)

This is generated from a .nb by saving it as .m file with shift+ctrl+s after selecting all the cells and pressing ctrl+8.

EDIT After the answer by @Syed, I see I have to add that I use Ubuntu. With Syed's answer I get the error:

./run.sh: line 3: syntax error near unexpected token `('.

The full bash script run.sh is:

#! /bin/bash

wolframscript -file filename.m 1 (-2) 3 output.txt

Answer 1

I have found the solution myself. In fact it is similar to the other answer by Syed.

I have found that ( and ) have a special meaning in bash: as explained in this thread in the Unix-SE they are used for subshell constructs. The first comment to the question in the linked thread, however, gives the right answer: using \( and \) instead.

The following works in my case:

#! /bin/bash

wolframscript -file filename.m 1 \(-2\) 3 output.txt

I think it should work in any other Linux version (and also in MacOS maybe?)

Answer 2

With a minor change to the script:

arg=ToExpression/@Most@Rest@$ScriptCommandLine;
file=Last[$ScriptCommandLine]; 
Export[file,arg]; 

Use:

wolframscript -file sample.m 1 (-2) out.txt

C:\type out.txt

1

-2

---

EDIT

Echo[$ScriptCommandLine] argv =StringReplace[#, "\\"->""]&/@Most@Rest @ $ScriptCommandLine; file=Last@ $ScriptCommandLine; Echo[argv] argc = Length @ argv; Echo[argc] Export[file,argv];

along with the command line:

wolframscript -file sample.m -args 1 \-2 out.txt

i.e. escaping the minus sign with \ and then stripping it later from arguments.