Variable expansion in BASH

champak · 11-24-2007, 08:43 PM

Hi..

Im reading values from a file line by line.
Sample File
..
first|blah
second|$some_shell_var
...

I have to process these values like
...
source=$(echo $line | cut -d'|' -f1)
dest=$(echo $line | cut -d'|' -f2)

echo $source
echo $dest
...

When I echo the values I get 'blah' for the first line(first|blah).
For the second line I get '$some_shell_var'. But instead I want the variable value to be expanded(I mean I want the $some_shell_var to be substituted with its value). How this can be done in BASH?

Any ideas?

Thanks

ntubski · 11-24-2007, 10:11 PM

Code:

#check if dest starts with a '$'
if [ ${dest:0:1} = '$' ] ; then
   #remove the '$'
   dest="${dest:1}"
   #{!dest} uses indirection, 
   #search for variable indirection in the bash man page for details
   echo "source = $source, dest = ${!dest}"
else
   echo "source = $source, dest = $dest"
fi

champak · 11-24-2007, 10:36 PM

Thanks for a lot ntubski.
But just checking if there's any direct approach to get the variable expanded without removing the '$' char

ntubski · 11-25-2007, 11:36 AM

I guess you could use eval:

Code:

eval "echo dest = ${dest}"

But if you have something in your file like

Code:

second|$(rm -rf /*)

bad things could happen...

champak · 11-26-2007, 12:19 AM

ya thx again

bigearsbilly · 11-26-2007, 02:44 AM

try this,

Code:


IFS=\|
while read f1 f2; do
    eval source="$f1"
    eval dest="$f2"
done