UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Bit of a weird one i suppose, i want to use an echo inside an echo... For example...

i have a script that i want to use to take users input and create another script. Inside this script it creates it also needs to use echos...

echo "echo "hello"" >$file
echo "echo "goodbye"" >$file

Why is this not correct?

Thanks.

it should be echo "echo \" somthing\" " > $file

echo "echo "hello"" >$file

If you want only hello should be written to $file, then
The command should be

Code:

echo `echo "hello"`

For mor ecample:

Code:

echo "echo `date`"
echo Thu Sep 10 08:15:31 EDT 2009
echo `echo \`date\``
Thu Sep 10 08:15:12 EDT 2009

A few observations here:
1. As suggested earlier, either "escape" the double quotes surrounding "hello" or use single quote i.e. use

Code:

 echo "echo \"Hello\" "
or echo "echo 'hello' "

2. By doing >$file two times the second echo (i.e. good bye) will over write $file. Instead use

Code:

 echo "echo 'goodbye'" >> $file

to append the contents of the echo into the file.
3. It is a best practice to refrain from creating elaborate scripts using the echo command. Instead use shell "here documents"

Code:

cat <<! > $file
echo "Hello" 
echo "Good bye" 
!

is certainly a lot cleaner.