Question

I have a Perl script that gives me a defined list of random numbers that correspond to the lines of a file. Next I want to extract those lines from the file using sed.

#!/bin/bash
count=$(cat last_queries.txt | wc -l)
var=$(perl test.pl test2 $count)

The variable var returns an output like: cat last_queries.txt | sed -n '12p;500p;700p'. The problem is that I can’t run this last command. I tried with $var, but the output is not correct (if I run manually the command it works fine, so no problem there). What is the correct way to do this?

P.S: Sure I could do all the work in Perl, but I’m trying to learn this way, because it could help me in other situations.

Answer 1

You just need to do:

#!/bin/bash
count=$(cat last_queries.txt | wc -l)
$(perl test.pl test2 $count)

However, if you want to call your Perl command later, and that’s why you want to assign it to a variable, then:

#!/bin/bash
count=$(cat last_queries.txt | wc -l)
var="perl test.pl test2 $count" # You need double quotes to get your $count value substituted.

...stuff...

eval $var

As per Bash’s help:

~$ help eval
eval: eval [arg ...]
    Execute arguments as a shell command.

    Combine ARGs into a single string, use the result as input to the shell,
    and execute the resulting commands.

    Exit Status:
    Returns exit status of command or success if command is null.