Bash Commands in Variables

[Hase]

I'm being stupid here. Maybe just tired. Anyone help?

aaron@corona ~/code$ cat up
#! /bin/bash
COMMAND='sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade'
echo "$COMMAND"
$COMMAND

I'm sure it's something simple, it's just not coming to me and Googling hasn't been fruitful.

Results in:

aaron@corona ~/code$ up
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
/usr/local/bin/up: line 4: sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade: command not found

[Hase]

Okay. Double quotes mostly works.

aaron@corona ~/code$ cat up
#! /bin/bash
COMMAND="sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade"
echo "$COMMAND"
$COMMAND

But it still doesn't like the "&&". Anyone?

aaron@corona ~$ up
sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
E: The update command takes no arguments

[m_duck]

I'm not sure about the bash command in a variable, but you could achieve the same using an alias. Edit ~/.bashrc and add:

alias up='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade'

Then source ~/.bashrc so it updates the alias

source ~/.bashrc

From then on you should be able to call up and it will run that command.

Apologies if you were just wanting to be able to do it in bash - I can't help in that respect.

[Hase]

Thanks for the suggestion. I use several aliai () currently. This is kind of just an exercise and has a little more portability.

[lswb]

Try

eval $command

In your example everything after the first "aptitude" command is being passed as arguements to "aptitude" rather than being evaluated by the shell. When "eval" is used all arguments are passed to the shell for evaluation.

[Hase]

Try

eval $command

In your example everything after the first "aptitude" command is being passed as arguements to "aptitude" rather than being evaluated by the shell. When "eval" is used all arguments are passed to the shell for evaluation.

Aha! Perfect! I was not familiar with that but solved it all. Thank you much!