Execute program in current shell within shell script

Question

I made a little shell script, that parses the .ssh config and allows me to pick an entry with fzf, and then connects to that host:

#!/bin/bash

set -o nounset -o errexit -o pipefail

list_remote_hosts()
{
    choice="$(cat $HOME/.ssh/config | awk -v RS= -v FS=\\n -v IGNORECASE=1 '
        {
            ip = ""
            alias = ""
            id_file = ""
            username = ""
            port = ""

            for (j = 1; j <= NF; ++j) {
                split($j, tmp, " ")
                if (tmp[1] == "Host") { alias = tmp[2] }
                if (tmp[1] == "Hostname") { ip = tmp[2] }
                if (tmp[1] == "IdentityFile") { id_file = tmp[2] }
                if (tmp[1] == "User") { username = tmp[2] }
                if (tmp[1] == "Port") { port = tmp[2] }
            }

            if (ip || alias && alias != "*") {
                if (port == "")
                {
                    port = "22"
                }
                print "ssh " username "@" ip " -i " id_file " -p " port
            }
        }
    ' | fzf)"

    "$($choice)"
}

list_remote_hosts

That works, but I am having problems giving ownership to the current shell. When connected, the script freezes (because ssh is started in a subshell I imagine). Once I type e.g. exit, and the ssh command terminates, I can see the output.

I want to automatically give ownership to the current shell when the script is run, so that I get the same behavior like running the ssh command from within my terminal.

I tried all sorts of things like appending && zsh or using eval or exec, but none of these worked. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Try changing "$($choice)" to simply $choice (no quotes) -- that should expand the awk output into words and spawn the ssh command from the current process

---

This looks like it might be a problem

if (ip || alias && alias != "*") {
    if (port == "") port = "22"
    print "ssh " username "@" ip " -i " id_file " -p " port
}

What happens if ip is empty but alias is not? You'll enter the block, but you don't use the alias variable anywhere. You might want

if (!ip) { ip = alias }
if (ip && ip != "*") { ...

---

This might work as an alternative way to structure the function. Untested:

remote_host_connect() {
    awk '...' $HOME/.ssh/config \
    | fzf \
    | sh </dev/tty >/dev/tty 2>&1
}

---

This works for me as a standalone script:

#!/bin/bash
eval "$(
    awk -v RS= -F'[[:space:]]+' '{
        for (i=1; i<NF; i+=2)
            data[$i]=$(i+1)
        ip = (data["HostName"] ? data["HostName"] : data["Host"])
        if (ip && ip != "*")
            printf "ssh %s@%s %s %s\n",
                (data["User"] ? data["User"] : ENVIRON["LOGNAME"]),
                ip,
                (data["IdentityFile"] ? "-i " data["IdentityFile"] : ""),
                "-p " (data["Port"] ? data["Port"] : 22)
    }' ~/.ssh/config \
    | fzf
)"