Question

I am working on a script in KornShell (ksh). My database connection is through SQLPLUS to an Oracle 9i database. I have not had any problems getting DB values into shell variables, EXCEPT that any consecutive whitespace is automatically truncated to only one character.

Here is an example of my code:

MY_VAR=`sqlplus -s usr/pass@db << !
set heading off;
set pagesize 0;

select a_value from a_table where an_index = 25;
!`

The actual data in the database is like this:

Dec 15 09:19:10 <24:0070> User record (5    XATY       41839FG8   58775HK9AFF) is invalid for this condition

My code example above returns it like this:

Dec 15 09:19:10 <24:0070> User record (5 XATY 41839FG8 58775HK9AFF) is invalid for this condition

The spacing is critical for what I am working with.

Thank you in advance for your help.

Answer 1

First off, don’t use backticks, they’re deprecated per ‘The New Kornshell Programming Language’, published 1995! Instead, use the easy-to-nest version of command substitution, $( yourCmd goes here).

You don’t show us how you’re using your variable $MY_VAR. If you saying

echo $MY_VAR > outputFile

You need to quote the variable, i.e.

print -- "$MY_VAR" > outputFile

Print is a ksh major-upgrade on echo, but it is best to have the habit of using ‘–‘ between the command and the strings you want to print. Any ‘-‘ char in the string you want to print can throw an unguarded (i.e. no ‘–‘), print command for a loop.

You may also need to quote the assignment to MY_VAR, i.e.

MY_VAR="$(sqlplus -s usr/pass@db <<-EOD
set heading off;
set pagesize 0;

select a_value from a_table where an_index = 25;
EOD
)"

I’ve switched to EOD, as the ! char is used by many shells for notations like !$ (last word of previous line), so why confuse things.

Note for future: There is a tag for ksh that you can use here on StackOverflow. Shell is ver ambiguous, and can mean Windows cmd.com as well as zsh.

I hope this helps.