I don't have a clue, which is why I'm here. The following must be a common situation that has an easy answer, but I don't know enough to be able to search for or understand potential answers, so please be explicit and patient...

I want to keep the discussion on an abstract level because I want to learn about general principles (i.e. "teach a man to fish") rather than get some particular script to work (as in "give a man a fish").

I have a bash script that contains a variable, lets call it ~cmd~ (I'm using the symbol ~ as a delimiter -- like begin, end). When I add ~echo $cmd~ to the script then stuff gets printed out to the xterm in which I run my script. If I cut and paste (using my mouse) the stuff back into the xterm, then the stuff gets executed as a command and produces output. I want to capture that output and assign it to a variable called ~result~ in my bash script and achieve that all within my script (so I don't have to cut and paste anything). There must be some general way to do that sort of thing, but what is it?

If there is not some general method which just always works, then perhaps there is some method for my particular situation (but I'ld prefer a general solution). In my particular case, what gets printed out is ~cat /tmp/foo | sed -n -e 's@.*"documentation at" location="\([^"]*\).*@wget -o - "\1"@p'~. When I cut and paste that into an xterm what happens is that ~wget -o - "http://myhome"~ is produced as output. I want that output to be assigned to the variable ~result~ in my bash script.

I tried ~result=$( $cmd )~ but that produces the error ~cat: invalid option -- 'o'~

I lucked into an answer...

~result=$(eval $cmd )~

Don't have a clue as to the errors involving cat, or why ~result=$( $cmd )~ is not a general solution, but I'm willing to accept that maybe nobody really knows how to explain to me what is going on so I should just be happy using things I don't understand so as to get things done...

i have been using something like this succesfully:
on recent bash versions.

The tick "`" surrounding the command means "the output of the command".

"I feel your ..." in #2 The magic search word is: bash command substitution here
And if you replace your ~ idea with [CODE]...[/CODE], you will get pretty like #3!

You would probably need to practice on variable assignments and expansion first. Lots of tutorials online that can help you.

backticks are $(deprecated)
You can use 'em, for now...
Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh my!

TBH: In the last seven years, I recall using eval in one script.
A zenity - choice driven program launcher.

I don't understand it.
And it's my opinion that the use of "~" as a delimiter in a ~Variable~ may be a train wreck
waiting to happen.

Just sayin'