Shell Programming and Scripting

I'm having trouble manipulating a string that contains single quotes (') in it. I'm writing a ksh script to parse in a few queries from a config file, such as this:

findbug \(\(Project 'in' "Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI" '&&' Status 'in' "N" '&&' New_on 'lessthan' "070107" \)\) '&&' \(Class 'isequal' "Development" \)

if i physically call this command it works fine and I get my database results, but I am parsing this string from the config file and storing it in a string variable and then trying to use it and it doesn't work.

For instance I have a variable NewQuery which contains the string.
I do echo $NewQuery and this prints out:
findbug \(\(Project 'in' "Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI" '&&' Status 'in' "N" '&&' New_on 'lessthan' "070107" \)\) '&&' \(Class 'isequal' "Development" \)

but if i just do $NewQuery to execute that command it complains:
findbug: Syntax Error: Bad operator 'in'.

Usage: findbug [options] [expr \&\& expr \|\| expr ...]

any idea what i'm doing wrong?

the shell substitutes the command just one time, $NewQuery substitutes the variable once, an then directly calls the programm findbug with the argument
\(\(Project 'in' "Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI" '&&' Status 'in' "N" '&&' New_on 'lessthan' "070107" \)\) '&&' \(Class 'isequal' "Development" \)
without removing \ and '

yes that is what i'm trying to do, run the program findbug with the argument \(\(Project 'in' "Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI" '&&' Status 'in' "N" '&&' New_on 'lessthan' "070107" \)\) '&&' \(Class 'isequal' "Development" \)

but the shell will not execute it when i call $NewQuery. It finds the first single quote 'in' and then complains.

but if i type the whole thing out:
findbug \(\(Project 'in' "Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI" '&&' Status 'in' "N" '&&' New_on 'lessthan' "070107" \)\) '&&' \(Class 'isequal' "Development" \)

it executes fine. what is the difference?

Code:

eval findbug "${NewQuery}"

i knew it was gonna be something so easy. thanks so much!

running # $NewQuery generates the command as I wrote above,

running

# findbug \(\(Project 'in' "Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI" '&&' Status 'in' "N" '&&' New_on 'lessthan' "070107" \)\) '&&' \(Class 'isequal' "Development" \)

directly in shell, seems to be the same, but real it runs

findbug ((Project in Deployment,HDRCI,LHS,LSS,WUCI && Status in N && New_on lessthan 070107 )) && (Class isequal Development )

not 100%correct, but I hope its clear what I'm trying to say



when you enter a command the shell parses the command for special characters like $ or many others
' \ " prevent the shell from substituting this special characters, but are removed afterwards

type "man ksh" or "man bash" or wait for someone who speaks better english to explain you this

ok one more question, how do I store the results in a variable?
I am able to pipe it to a file, but I need to store it as well.

I tried this, but no luck:
results= $(eval $NewQuery)
why doesn't this work?