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Help with Bash quoting

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# 1  
Old 06-06-2014
Linux Help with Bash quoting
I am trying to write a BASH script that will prompt a user to enter a number of days, then calculate the date.

My problem is the date command uses single or double quotes. For Example..
Code:
 date -d "7 days"

Here is an example of some same code I am trying to work through.

Code:
echo "when do you want the sudo access to expire?"
read num_days
echo "so we want sudo access to expire on"     date -d "$num_days days"

How would I write this code to ask for the number of days then calculate the future days with the correct quoting?
# 2  
Old 06-06-2014
The single or double quoting is not the problem, you seem to have a handle on it.

The problem is that the shell's not going to convert date -d ... into a string unless you ask it to.

Code:
echo "so we want sudo access to expire on $(date -d "$num_days days")"

The $( ) syntax will do so nicely. It even nests inside other "" quite unlike the old ` ` syntax.
# 3  
Old 06-06-2014
Welcome to forums,

Try

Code:
echo "so we want sudo access to expire on"     $(date -d "$num_days days")

--edit--

I see corona already posted answer
# 4  
Old 06-06-2014
Linux
Thanks,

I'm almost there. So how would I go about storing
Code:
$(date -d "$num_days days")"

as a variable to call back at a later time? I can't seem to get this work by using
Code:
SUDO_EXPIRE=(date -d "$num_days days")

Bruce
Last edited by javajockey; 06-06-2014 at 05:25 PM.. Reason: mistake
# 5  
Old 06-06-2014
It works exactly the way we showed you.

Code:
SUDO_EXPIRE=$(date -d "$num_days days")

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