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Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting How to handle variable with special character? Post 303026210 by bakunin on Wednesday 21st of November 2018 05:49:04 PM
Old 11-21-2018
Quote:
Originally Posted by green_k
the variable is "v$xyz",
No, it is not. A "variable" is something like "$name" or "${name}", where "name" is a name you choose. "$xyz" might be a variable, but "v$xyz" is a literal "v" followed by the content of a variable with the name "xyz".

Quote:
Originally Posted by green_k
the file name like v$xyz_xxxx_xxxx.txt.
OK, but is the "$xyz" in this filename now meant literally or should that signify the variable portion of the filename which you want to transport via the variable? If the first is the case a simple quotation will suffice, because this is what it is for - inside of (single) quotes the "$" loses its special meaning to the shell and reverts back to a normal character:

Code:
ls -l v$xyz_xxxx_xxxx.txt

will first replace "$xyz_xxxx_xxxx" with the content of a variable named "xyz_xxxx_xxxx" (which most probably will not exist so that it evaluates to "", the empty string) and therefore search for a file named "v.txt". Whereas:

Code:
ls -l 'v$xyz_xxxx_xxxx.txt'

(notice the single quotes) will look for a file named exactly this: "v$xyz_xxxx_xxxx.txt".

If "$xyz" is a variable and you want to use that as the changing part of an otherwise fixed filename then this code snippet is for you:

Code:
xyz="some$thing"
ls -l "v${xyz}_xxxx_xxxx.txt"

This will search for a file name "vsome$thing_xxxx_xxxx.txt". Because of the braces around "xyz" the shell knows that only this (and not the rest of the string) is the name of the variable. Notice the double quotes: you should habitually double-quote every use of any variable - ever and always! (There are only very few exceptions to this rule of thumb.) This way blanks (yes, filename can contain blanks) will not break your script.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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read(1) 						      General Commands Manual							   read(1)

NAME
read - read a line from standard input SYNOPSIS
var ... DESCRIPTION
reads a single line from standard input. The line is split into fields as when processed by the shell (refer to shells in the first field is assigned to the first variable var, the second field to the second variable var, and so forth. If there are more fields than there are specified var operands, the remaining fields and their intervening separators are assigned to the last var. If there are more vars than fields, the remaining vars are set to empty strings. The setting of variables specified by the var operands affect the current shell execution environment. Standard input to can be redirected from a text file. Since affects the current shell execution environment, it is usually provided as a normal shell special (built-in) command. Thus, if it is called in a subshell or separate utility execution environment similar to the following, it does not affect the shell variables in the caller's environment: Options recognizes the following options: Do not treat a backslash character in any special way. Consider each backslash to be part of the input line. Opperands recognizes the following operands: var The name of an existing or nonexisting shell variable. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
Environment Variables determines the internal field separators used to delimit fields. RETURN VALUE
exits with one of the following values: 0 Successful completion. >0 End-of-file was detected or an error occurred. EXAMPLES
Print a file with the first field of each line moved to the end of the line. while read -r xx yy do printf "%s %s " "$yy" "$xx" done < input_file SEE ALSO
csh(1), ksh(1), sh(1), sh-posix(1). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
read(1)
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