Hello

I'm writing a script in which I need to insert date/time stamps in exactly the same format as syslog (ie. %b %e %T). However, echo is eating the blank padded space for (%e).

I will insert the date/time stamp like this:and so have defined the DATE variable like this:
This is where echo eats up the blank padded space.

If I were to insert the date/time stamp using "$DATE" instead of just $DATE, echo does not eat the spaces, but I don't want to do that and can't figure out how to include this in the actual DATE variable.

If I use sed (it's getting dirty and cumbersome now), I can do this (using echo -E $DATE):Which works as expected, but when I try and use an escaped space instead of an asterisk in the replacement text, it just won't work. Below, what I think should be being fed back to the echo command is:but this is what I get instead:
Any help would be appreciated.

Many thanks,
Steve

So echo $DATE doesn't work, but echo "$DATE" does... stupid question then, but why would you rather not do it that way? From all I can see, it's the only way you're going to be able to preserve the variable.

Thanks for your reply rose_bud,

I was hoping to not have to use the " " to preserve the variable, because AFAIK you normally don't have to. However, it seems " " is the answer so that's the way I shall go.

Again, many thanks!
Steve

Yeah, I understand why it's irritating, but I think this may not necessarily be a limitation of echo, but one of just bash in general (i.e. you have to surround function parameters with quotes if there's the slightest chance that the parameter could have a space in it, etc...). Bash tends to have some oversights at times =/