UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

On Solaris 5.8 in ksh,

I have a sample.txt with contents
A 105 305
B 205 405
C 100 198
.......................

when I do a cat sample.txt the O/P is exactly as above but when I do a echo `cat sample.txt` the O/P changes to

A 105 305 B 205 405 C 100 198...........

Everything is displayed as one single line.

Why is this happenning and what should I do to get the O/P from echo `cat sample.txt` to display as cat sample.txt

Thanks,

When the shell builds the command line for the echo command it removes white space characters. If you type an echo statement with a bunch of spaces between the arguments like this:
echo a &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp b
you will only get:
a b
as your output, and you are running into the same thing. I guess you could use quotes like this:
echo "`cat sample.txt`"

But what is wrong with just:
cat sample.txt

If you insist on using "echo" like that, remember that the file's contents must all fit one one command line, so it won't work with longer files.

The echo "`cat sample.txt`" worked. Thanks.

The reason I am doing the echo is cause I have to pass the entire file to Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) as a script O/P and OEM wont accept more than one "oramessage" statement.

Here is exatcly how I am using it ....

export EX_FL=`cat sample.txt`
echo "<orameaage>" $EX_FL "</oramessage>".
echo "<oraresult>2</oraresult>"


In my script there can only be one "<oramessage></oamessage>" statement.

Thanks,