UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,
I'm working with ksh.
I was working with the echo command

That is
echo "Today is $date"

which would show for example
Toady is 7/12/12
which was fine

however, know I only recieve the first part of the echo without the date.
Today is

Could I have edited the echo function?

Thanks JD

Seems like your "date" variable is empty/undefined. Check how are you assigning "date" it's value.

Looks like your "date" variable is unset. Are you running another shell or did you logout/login in between? Try to execute the date command like

Code:

echo "Today is " $(date)

Congratulation @bartus11 - you were first!

I don't know what happend it just stopped working. Then I did logout then logged back in getting the same results bad. No I only have ksh shell. The command you provided works. However, can I reset it?

You can (re)assign a value to a variable, in this case

Code:

date=$(date)

First dateis the variable, the second date is the command that is run with the $(...) construct, and its output is assigned to the variable. Variables are lost when you log out. Use your respective login script to (re)assign them on login.

$date is not a command which prints the date. It's just a variable named the letters "d", "a", "t", "e". You could have called it 'slartibartfast', 'green', or 'clockwise' too.

At one point you put the following letters in it, in order: "7", "/", "1", "2", "/", "1", "2".

So, you weren't really getting the date there, you were just printing a string you'd put in there earlier. If you want to get the date, try date +%D. See man date for what %D represents as well as other options.

Ok that worked thanks

But it seem no matter which command I use it won't show with the echo command unless I (re)assign like you stated. For example
I tried
echo "$ls"
which showed nothing
then I (re)assigned as a variable
ls=$(ls)
which works same for other command. I think I unset more than one command

Thanks
JD