Question

Following command

echo 'a b' 'c'

outputs

a b c

But the following

X="'a b' 'c'"
echo $X;

will outout

'a b' 'c'

I am searching a way to unquote $X , so that it will output “a b c” , but without losing the merged ‘a b’ argument. (= 2 arguments instead of 3, makes no difference for command ‘echo’, but for other commands like ‘cp’)

Answer 1

Try xargs:

$ echo $x
'a b' 'c'

$ echo $x | xargs ./echo
argc = 3
argv[0] = ./echo
argv[1] = a b
argv[2] = c