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From: dfenyes@thesis1.med.uth.tmc.edu (David Fenyes)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: `;` problems in *sh
Summary: It's in the quoting
Message-ID: <4968@lib.tmc.edu>
Date: 15 Apr 91 22:49:40 GMT
References: <1991Apr14.125148.27323@ssd.kodak.com> <1991Apr15.004857.17784@athena.mit.edu> <1991Apr15.212340.13745@agate.berkeley.edu>
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In article <1991Apr15.212340.13745@agate.berkeley.edu> smoot@cs.berkeley.edu writes:
>Why does:
>csh> `echo "ls ; ls"` 
>fail?  
>(Generates:
>     ; not found
>     ls not found
>)
>

The string returned by `` is interpreted as:

"ls" ";" "ls".  This makes ';' and 'ls' args to  /bin/ls.

Variable and command substitution should work within the quotes,
but shell special characters will not be recognized.

try

eval `echo "ls ; ls"`

and it will work as you desire.

--
David Fenyes                                 dfenyes@thesis1.hsch.utexas.edu
University of Texas Medical School           Houston, Texas