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Date: Mon, 7 Jul 2003 00:46:26 -0700
From: Luigi Rizzo <rizzo@icir.org>
To: hackers@freebsd.org
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Subject: hints on shell string expansion ?
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X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2003 07:46:27 -0000

Hi,
i need a bit of help from creative /bin/sh users...

I am writing a script to generate ipfw test cases, and as
part of the script i need to generate 'actions' which can be either
one or more, e.g.

a1="allow"
a2="deny log"
a3="pipe 10"

Now, this works:

	for act in "$a1" "$a2" "$a3"; do
		echo "add $act ip from 1.2.3.4 to 5.6.7.8"
	done

but i because the string of actions is used in several places,
I would love to find a way to group actions into a single
variable and then write something like this

	actions="allow 'deny log' 'pipe 10'"
	for act in $actions ; do
		echo "add $act ip from 1.2.3.4 to 5.6.7.8"
	done

I have tried to play tricks with quotes and backquotes, backslashes,
eval, etc. but no methods helped. Any ideas ?

	cheers
	luigi