[Techtalk] BASH command subsitution

[David Sumbler]

On Sun, 7 Sep 2003, Robin Hood wrote:

> I have been working through my Unix textbook and am up to the chapter on the
> Bourne shell.
> I am up to the section on command subsitution.
> According to my textbook typing:
> 
> $ echo the date today is 'date'
> 
> should result in something like:
> 
> the date today is Mon Feb 2 00:41:55 CST 1998

(etc.)

You need to be using "back-quotes" (i.e. ` ) rather than
forward-quotes ( ' ).

The recommended way of doing command substitution is (e.g.):

$ echo $(date)

rather than

$ echo `date`

This first way is preferable for readability and clarity.

David

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