Hi everyone,

I am trying to search for a string in a file that is partly made up of a variable. Here's the code:

echo "parentCategory = $parentCategory"
echo "parentCategoryFormatted = $parentCategoryFormatted"

numUrlsFoundInParentCategory=`grep -c "<Topic r:id=\"Top\/World\/Français\/" $inputFile`

echo "Hard-coded result = $numUrlsFoundInParentCategory"

numUrlsFoundInParentCategory=`grep -c \""<Topic r:id=\\\"$parentCategoryFormatted"\" $inputFile`

echo grep -c \""<Topic r:id=\\\"$parentCategoryFormatted"\" $inputFile

echo "Dynamic result = $numUrlsFoundInParentCategory"

I think that this is all to do with nested quotes and cascading backslashes!

Try setting the -x option in the script and see if the trace output helps.

Jerry

You seem to have gone a bit too far with the backslashes!

I'm assuming your input file looks a bit like this:

cat zzz.txt
<Topic r:id="Top/World/Français/
<Topic r:id="Top/World/Français/
dfgg
<Topic r:id="Top/World/Français/

parentCategoryFormatted="\"Top/World/Français/"
numUrlsFoundInParentCategory=`grep -c "<Topic r:id=$parentCategoryFormatted" zzz.txt`
echo "Dynamic result = $numUrlsFoundInParentCategory"
Dynamic result = 3