Re^3: backticks and quotation trouble in bash

[LanX]

in reply to Re^2: backticks and quotation trouble in bash
in thread backticks and quotation trouble in bash

again ...qx/nslookup $1/ ... should do.

> why does the awk example work?

no nested backticks?

> are ways of calling bash from perl

exactly, thats the ill thing about your construct, your calling perl from bash to call a system command.

UPDATE:

> No commentary on the fact that I should just write the whole program in perl, please. I would if I could.

LOL. This is a Perl help board, if you're not interested to learn our solutions you should consider hiring someone who does the tricky things for you.

[floobit]

Thanks, I see it now. You have answered me perfectly.

[Tommy]

In bash, you can't nest backticks, but you can nest the newer, more flexible "$()" construct:

echo "$( command arg arg '$( nested_command arg arg )' )"

[floobit]

Unfortunately, it's more a restriction that "all my programs be in bash" for maintainability by other admins who potentially don't know perl. Using perl like I am here is a bit of a stretch, but it seems silly to use 6 pipes with alternating awk and sed lines when this is more readable and flexible, especially because the whole line can be commented as "get the hostname using DNS". Alas.

[CountZero]

So how will the other admins maintain the Perl part of your bash-script? It will not be more readable for someone who does not know Perl and they might indeed prefer 6 pipes, awk and sed.

Wouldn't it be better to write a little Perl-script with well defined in-and-output and use that as a "black box" kind of building block?