Question

I need to output some text as bash script, but in a script. I use cat for this, but it has one drawback. It interprets variables and stuff during it is being written. I do want to prevent this.

How to do that without quoting all varibles (my script is failrly long)? Example

cat >/tmp/script << EOF
  $HOSTNAME
  # lots of other stuff I do NOT want to escape like \$VARIABLE
  # ...
EOF

cat /tmp/script
myhostname.mylan

I want:

cat /tmp/script
$HOSTNAME

Edit: Please note my script (here only $HOSTNAME) is very long, I dont want to change it all. Also single quoting does not work with <<

cat >/tmp/script '<< EOF
  $HOSTNAME
EOF'
File not found: EOF'

What’s the trick? Thanks.

Answer 1

If you want everything quoted:

cat << 'EOF'
stuff here with $signs is OK
as are `backquotes`
EOF

See the section on “here documents” in the manual.