The config file was mostly intended to be used with a vb script. I didn't really want to start maintaining two separate config files, as I actually do use the vb script as well.

The config file holds variables in the form of ...

variable = "value"

I'm using declare because if I don't bash will try to use $var_name as a command. Using declare I can create variables by using variables. This way I can just add variables to the config file if needed and I don't need to go back to the script and manually declare each one separately on it's own line.

Because they would throw my script off as the script takes some action based on the contents of the variables. I would have to account for the variable values having quotations around them which they shouldn't have in the first place.

Well, running 'help declare' at the shell gives me ...

I assumed (yeah,yeah...bad idea to make assumptions ) that it would be like declaring a variable normally only with this the declaration is explicit and you can define its type (dunno exactly what practical use that would give?).

However, after I wrote this I wrote a test that simply does...

Code:

#!/bin/bash

audit_host="http://server"
var_name="non_ie_page"
var_value="${audit_host}/oa/admin_pc_add_2.php"
declare $var_name=$var_value

echo "audit_host : $audit_host"
echo "non_ie_page : $non_ie_page"

and it gives the following output ...

So I'm guessing the issue ultimately lies in the way I'm getting the variable values, which seems to allude to a pipeline "issue" (not really an issue, just the way bash handles it) that I read in this thread.

However, I just got around my problem by doing the following ...

Code:

    for line in $config_formatted; do
      var_name=$(echo "$line" | awk -F= '{print $1}')
      var_value=$(echo "$line" | awk -F= '{print $2}' | sed 's/\(^"\|"$\)//g')
      echo "$line" | grep -q '^.*_page=\$' && var_value="${audit_host}${var_value/\$\{audit_host\}/}"
      declare $var_name=$var_value
    done

So all in all, it works now. It's a bit of a kluge, but oh well.

Thanks for your reply!