Date: Mon, 4 Mar 1996 13:51:21 +0000 (GMT) From: Gabor Zahemszky <zgabor@CoDe.hu> To: dgy@rtd.com (Don Yuniskis) Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: stewpid shell tricks Message-ID: <199603041351.NAA02650@CoDe.CoDe.hu> In-Reply-To: <199603011529.IAA15089@seagull.rtd.com> from "Don Yuniskis" at Mar 1, 96 08:29:21 am
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> > Greetings! > Can someone explain how to properly embed tabs in shell variables > and commands? As a real simplistic test case: > > x="this\tis a test" > echo $x > > yields different results under different shells. In particular, I > haven't found a good way of doing: > > result=`echo $x | cut -f2` > > or similar. > Thx, > --don First: try echo "$x" (or printf) If you don't put ", the shell substitues the $x, but in it, there is a <tab> character, which will be a separatot character, so the echo command will get 2 parameters, and generates a line in which there will be a space between them. (and not a tab character) Second you can put tabs in the variables: x='some<tab>thing' or instead of ', you can use ". Or maybe: some\<tab>thing works, too. Of course, hit <TAB>. Some shells (bash, zsh, ksh, and FB's sh in command-line editing modes, sometimes use the <TAB> character. Most times, you can type Ctrl-V, and after it a <TAB> in that is your problem. Or write me more clean, what is the problem -- Gabor Zahemszky <zgabor@CoDe.hu> -:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:-:- Earth is the cradle of human sense, but you can't stay in the cradle forever. Tsiolkovsky
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