mysql_fix_privilege_tables behaves odd, explain this

[Scott Haneda]

Well this is very interesting

At the start of the script they have
root_password="$1"
host="localhost"
user="root"

I added in just below the above
echo "----------------------------------------------------------"
echo $root_password
echo "----------------------------------------------------------"

Then if you try 
sh mysql_fix_privilege_tables -p somepassword
Guess what you get...
----------------------------------------------------------
-p somepassword
----------------------------------------------------------

So it seems the script takes the whole argument...

sh mysql_fix_privilege_tables my_root_pass
Works fine

Is this standard behavior?
The Script says
echo "If you get 'Access denied' errors, you should run this script again"
echo "and give the MySQL root user password as an argument!"

Does not really tell you there is some special way to do it.  What is the
heck is $1 anyway? And why is it a literally quoted value?

-------------------------------------------------------------
Scott Haneda                                Tel: [phone]
http://www.newgeo.com                       Fax: [phone]
scott@stripped                            Novato, CA U.S.A.