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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-12T21:02:55+00:00

I am writing a bash script and want to switch to another user, cd

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I am writing a bash script and want to switch to another user, cd into a directory specified by MYDIR in the users bash_profile and list the contents.

Currently I have:

read username
su - app${username} -c ls $MYDIR

The output is nothing, my first guess is that it is a problem reading $MYDIR from the users profile as doing it manually works fine e.g.

#su - appadmin
#ls $MYDIR
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You need to quote the command to be executed.

    At the moment the shell is replacing $MYDIR with the value from the caller’s environment. Also -c only passes the next arg to be executed, i.e. ls without the $MYDIR – you need to put quotes around the whole remote command:

    su - app${username} -c 'ls $MYDIR'
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