Hi there,

I've been scouring these forums and have found similar threads, but none apparently helped me solved my problem

I'd like to run a command within a bash script, but that command is provided by the user to the script and may contain quotes, which is where the problem lies.

My script is (fundamentally):

-----
#!/usr/bin/bash

commandToRun="$@"

$commandToRun ~/t.txt
-----

And I'd like to run it using the following:

> myscript.sh grep "foo bar"

But the quotes are removed by the time I try to run that command from within the script, i.e. the $commandToRun $filename line and so it tries to run
> grep foo bar
instead of
> grep "foo bar" ~/t.txt

Thanks for any help, it would be much appreciated!

Danny

Try escaping them:

Thanks for the help, but unfortunately that doesn't work
Running
> myscript.sh grep \"foo bar\"
gives
> grep: bar": No such file or directory

Hmm, I also tried changing the line that runs the command in the script to:
"$commandToRun" ~/t.txt
(which is arguably something I should've done before anyway), but now I get the following:

> myscript.sh grep "foo bar"
gives
grep foo bar: command not found

> myscript.sh grep \"foo bar\"
gives
grep "foo bar": command not found

Thanks again though :S

Aha!
I don't why I didn't spot this thread before when I was searching, but one of the threads in the 'More UNIX and Linux Forum Topics You Might Find Helpful' section (escaping double-quotes inside the script?) helped me solve it using a simple eval

So in the script, I now have:

----
#!/usr/bin/bash

commandToRun="$@"

eval "$commandToRun" ~/t.txt
----

I still have to run the command with the quotes escaped as zaxxon suggested, but at least it works now

> myscript.sh grep \"foo bar\"

Use single quotes:

Hm..
Works with ksh and bash. What shell do you use?