Shell Scripting - use the output of a command as an argument for another
 

I'm trying to set up a program to read my dynamic and natted ip address on my pda, then use ez-ipupdate to update the ip of my web page.

I figured out this command to get my external ip through the nat:

html2text (url of the check site) | cut -c21-35 | grep 2

This outputs my ip to the shell.
I then thought i'd do

html2text (url of the check site) | cut -c21-35 | grep 2 > ipaddress

Now I want to run

ez-ipupdate -a (the contents of the file ipaddress)

I can't run a better updater client as i'm fitting the entire distro into 16MB, and I have to put my page on that too.

How can I do this?

Thanks,
Tim

Or you can do the whole smash in one command:

Or you might prefer:
Note that ` is a back-tick, no an apostrophy (')

Thanks very much for your help - it works fine.

I actually tried rjlee's idea earlier, but it was the back tick that got me - i tried an apostrophe.

Thanks,
TIm

Just in case your interested...

Your response here also answered my question, namely how to copy from
a terminal console to a file, as in:

cp $( tty ) file-to-be-copied-to

Also, instead of getting ip from website you could grab it straight from ifconfig with:

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 | grep "inet addr:" | awk -F: {'print $2'} | cut -d\ -f 1