01-28-2017
Hi Peasant,
You are correct in saying that back-quotes are not deprecated as a method of performing command substitution in the standards. And, even though some people would like to, it is unlikely that the standards will formally deprecate back-quoted command substitution because so many existing (otherwise strictly conforming) shell scripts use them.
But, when writing new scripts (unless you intend to have them run on a pure Bourne shell that doesn't have
$(command) command substitution), I would always suggest using the
$(command) form... Note that:
- $(command) command substitutions can be nested,
- `command` command substitutions cannot be nested, and
- if you need to quote the results of a command substitution where the command contains a double-quoted string, the double quotes inside a $(command) command substitution are not affected by double quotes outside the command substitution; but double quotes inside a `command` command substitution produce undefined results if the command substitution is inside double quotes.
This User Gave Thanks to Don Cragun For This Post:
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subst(n) Tcl Built-In Commands subst(n)
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
NAME
subst - Perform backslash, command, and variable substitutions
SYNOPSIS
subst ?-nobackslashes? ?-nocommands? ?-novariables? string
_________________________________________________________________
DESCRIPTION
This command performs variable substitutions, command substitutions, and backslash substitutions on its string argument and returns the
fully-substituted result. The substitutions are performed in exactly the same way as for Tcl commands. As a result, the string argument
is actually substituted twice, once by the Tcl parser in the usual fashion for Tcl commands, and again by the subst command.
If any of the -nobackslashes, -nocommands, or -novariables are specified, then the corresponding substitutions are not performed. For
example, if -nocommands is specified, command substitution is not performed: open and close brackets are treated as ordinary characters
with no special interpretation.
Note that the substitution of one kind can include substitution of other kinds. For example, even when the -novariables option is speci-
fied, command substitution is performed without restriction. This means that any variable substitution necessary to complete the command
substitution will still take place. Likewise, any command substitution necessary to complete a variable substitution will take place, even
when -nocommands is specified. See the EXAMPLES below.
If an error occurs during substitution, then subst will return that error. If a break exception occurs during command or variable substi-
tution, the result of the whole substitution will be the string (as substituted) up to the start of the substitution that raised the excep-
tion. If a continue exception occurs during the evaluation of a command or variable substitution, an empty string will be substituted for
that entire command or variable substitution (as long as it is well-formed Tcl.) If a return exception occurs, or any other return code is
returned during command or variable substitution, then the returned value is substituted for that substitution. See the EXAMPLES below.
In this way, all exceptional return codes are "caught" by subst. The subst command itself will either return an error, or will complete
successfully.
EXAMPLES
When it performs its substitutions, subst does not give any special treatment to double quotes or curly braces (except within command sub-
stitutions) so the script
set a 44
subst {xyz {$a}}
returns "xyz {44}", not "xyz {$a}" and the script
set a "p} q {r"
subst {xyz {$a}}
returns "xyz {p} q {r}", not "xyz {p} q {r}".
When command substitution is performed, it includes any variable substitution necessary to evaluate the script.
set a 44
subst -novariables {$a [format $a]}
returns "$a 44", not "$a $a". Similarly, when variable substitution is performed, it includes any command substitution necessary to
retrieve the value of the variable.
proc b {} {return c}
array set a {c c [b] tricky}
subst -nocommands {[b] $a([b])}
returns "[b] c", not "[b] tricky".
The continue and break exceptions allow command substitutions to prevent substitution of the rest of the command substitution and the rest
of string respectively, giving script authors more options when processing text using subst. For example, the script
subst {abc,[break],def}
returns "abc,", not "abc,,def" and the script
subst {abc,[continue;expr {1+2}],def}
returns "abc,,def", not "abc,3,def".
Other exceptional return codes substitute the returned value
subst {abc,[return foo;expr {1+2}],def}
returns "abc,foo,def", not "abc,3,def" and
subst {abc,[return -code 10 foo;expr {1+2}],def}
also returns "abc,foo,def", not "abc,3,def".
SEE ALSO
Tcl(n), eval(n), break(n), continue(n)
KEYWORDS
backslash substitution, command substitution, variable substitution
Tcl 7.4 subst(n)