Shell Programming and Scripting

I have really big problems with two spaces. I tried to simplify my problem as much as possible. I have made a script to understand my problem:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
VAR='/path/with/two  spaces'
echo '/path/with/two  spaces'
echo $VAR

I am a beginner of scripting, but i thought until now i would guess what would be the output of the script above. But nothing i know...

Is there anybody out there who could explain me why the output is:

Code:

/path/with/two  spaces
/path/with/two spaces

If you do not see my problem, I do not know why the second line has only one space. It should be two spaces...

Thank you very much for every hint and help.

Hi,
You must to protect your variable with double quotes:

Code:

$ VAR='/path/with/two  spaces'
$ echo $VAR
/path/with/two spaces
$ echo "$VAR"
/path/with/two  spaces

Regards.

Expanding a little bit on what disedorgue said, ...

By quoting the string passed to echo ('word word'), the shell passes a single operand containing two spaces to echo. Without quoting $VAR, the shell expands $VAR and then splits the results into separate operands (/path/with/two and spaces) to be passed to echo. To get what you want, use:

Code:

echo "$VAR"

Note that variable expansion does not occur in single-quoted strings, but does occur between double-quoted strings. Compare the output from the above command with the output from:

Code:

echo '$VAR'

Code:

VAR="2  spaces"
VAR2='2  spaces'
echo " --------- "
echo $VAR
echo $VAR2
echo " --------- "
echo "$VAR"
echo "$VAR2"

However, single quotes will just print the variable:

Code:

echo '$VAR $VAR2'

Its just about the quotes, and in this case - all plain text - it doesnt even matter which quote you take, but to preserve formatting, always use quotes.

Hope this helps

Thank you very much for your help.

Double quotes solved my problem...