Question

I have a question regarding the usage of functions in a command in bash. getRegex is my function, it is defined at the end of the the file. The command that I want to use is the following:

COUNT=`grep -rnE 'getRegex' $HOME/new`

Now I tried a lot of different variants but I cannot make it work, even if I split it in 2. The method works correctly if I call it the following way: getRegex. Any idea what I am missing? TIA

Answer 1

The key words to answer are “bash command substitution”, which you could find in man bash or google.

By the way, double quotes are really important here.

#!/bin/bash

function my_func () {
    echo "no"
}

string="no you don't
no you don't
no you don't
no you don't
no you don't"


COUNT="$( echo "${string}" | grep "$( my_func )" -c )"
echo "${COUNT}"

And

$> ./ok.sh 
5