Here is the problem: always keep in mind that the shell will do a simple text replacement to replace variables with their contents. This is very versatile on one hand but can lead to unexpected behaviour on the other.

Consider the following lines:

Code:

variable="abc 123"
command $variable

When the shell executes this it shell will first replace "$variable" with "abc 123", only then execute "command abc 123". It would even be possible to "execute" a variables contents directly:

Code:

variable="ls -l"
$variable

This replacement process is done in several different steps. Look up the details under "command evaluation [in the] Korn shell".

Your variable contents now contain the pipe-symbol ("|"), which is part of the regular shell syntax. After the replacement phase the shell will end up with a command which looks like a pipeline (but of course can't be executed). This is the reason for the syntax error.

The trick is to prevent the shell from interpreting the contents of your variables so it can't confuse these with command parts. This is why elixir_sinari suggested the double quotes around the variable names - they do exactly this.

I hope this helps.

bakunin