Shell Programming and Scripting

Scrutinizer - It does not differ. I have tried exactly that.

Code:

#!/bin/bash -x
#b.sh
echo $1
STMT="cvs commit -m "$1" ./q.sh"
$STMT

Code:

$b.sh "First Second Third"
+ echo First Second Third
First Second Third
+ STMT='cvs commit -m First Second Third ./q.sh'
+ cvs commit -m First Second Third ./q.sh
cvs commit: nothing known about `Second'
cvs commit: nothing known about `Third'
cvs [commit aborted]: correct above errors first!

Moderator's Comments:

Code tags for code, PLEASE!

In summary, this is bad:

Code:

STRING="something something \"stuff in quotes\" something else"

$STRING

I suggested this as a alternative:

Code:

STRING="stuff in quotes"

something something "$STRING" something else

...but you went ahead and crammed the whole mess back into STRING as if that could fool it into working somehow.

It doesn't work that way, you can't "trick" or "fool" it. There isn't a "right way". Your entire method, algorithm, line of thought is flawed because shell doesn't work the way you think it ought to.

You have no reason to stuff the entire line into the variable. Stop doing it. There isn't a "right way" to cram the whole thing into a variable. The right way is to not do it at all, because strings do not work that way. Shell won't do that kind of doublethink without eval. You're trying to run a script from a variable and that's wrong.

Do it my way, and your code will work.

Keep doing it your way, and your code will never work.

Until you explain why you think you need to put the entire line into a variable, so we can solve that roadblock forcing you to do so, we're going to keep butting heads on this.

No, actually you haven't. You put the entire command line in a string again. That will not work without eval

It took me walking away from this and going camping for a weekend to see things from your point of view Corono688. Once I tried to stop stuffing everything in a variable and let UNIX do it's thing, life was much better. I actually was excited to come to work today to prove to myself your answer was spot on.

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for not giving up on this hard headed American.

Thanks for all the help on this everyone! Once I got it through that I did not need to "stuff" it all into a variable, life became a whole lot better!!

Thanks for reporting back and glad that you found a way..